Apparent objections to the Glacial Theory, 289 



But according to Lyell's reasoning, the present northern conti- 

 nents were submerged beneath the sea at the time when these blocks 

 were scattered over them. Whence then did the icebergs obtain the 

 detritus with which they were charged ? or where were the ice- 

 bergs themselves produced ? where was then situated the land 

 which furnished the erratics? The North was then ail Ocean, 

 could equatorial lands have furnished icebergs? 



Had the ancient erratic blocks been deposited by icebergs at a 

 time when the present northern lands were submerged, the arrange- 

 ment now apparent in their distribution would indicate, that such 

 icebergs must have come from a direction opposite to that pursued 

 in the present day. It may therefore perhaps be said, that the time 

 when our northern lands were beneath the sea, the then existing 

 drylands occupied the regions near the equator, especially since 

 many facts arising from the character and appearances of the im- 

 bedded fossils, would tend to show that former conditions of tem- 

 perature were far higher than now. Since, however, the northern 

 latitudes must always have enjoyed a colder climate than the equa- 

 tor, it is evident that had icebergs by any possibility been engen- 

 dered in the latter regions, they could not have been dissolved in the 

 colder temperature of the former, and therefore they would have 

 accumulated into a mass without depositing the erratics enclosed in 

 them. But such a distribution of land is easily seen to be totally 

 adverse to the formation of icebergs, and Lyell himself assures us, 

 that if we consider a mere approximation to such a state of things, 

 it would be sufficient to cause a general elevation of temperature, 

 and if there were no arctic lands to chill the atmosphere and freeze 

 the sea, and if the loftiest chains were near the line, it seems rea- 

 sonable to imagine, that the highest mountains might be clothed with 

 a rich vegetation to their summits, and that nearly all signs of frost 

 would disappear from the earth. If during the long night of a 

 polar winter, the snows should whiten the summits of some arctic 

 islands, they would be dissolved as rapidly by the returning sun, as 

 are the snows of Etna by the blasts of the sirocco." — LyelVs Prin. 

 Geol.p. 191. 



Now there seems every reason to believe from the phenomena 

 which strata disclose in all parts of the world, that the temperature 



