14 DISCUSSIONS IN CLIMATOLOGY. 



tude hitherto unheard of in geological speculations 

 had to be assumed. A change of 3°, however, being 

 totally inadequate to account for the great changes of 

 climate in question, earthquakes of sufficient power to 

 break up the solid framework of the globe had to be 

 called into operation, so as to cause a rearrangement 

 of matter sufficient to produce a displacement of the 

 pole to the extent required. The amount of distortion 

 necessitated by this theory is so enormous that most 

 of its advocates have recently abandoned it as hope- 

 less. 



But is there really after all any necessity for invok- 

 ing the aid of agencies so extraordinary and gigantic? 

 To carve a country, say like Scotland, out of hard 

 Silurian rock into hill and dale and mountain ridges, 

 thousands of feet in height, is certainly a more 

 stupendous undertaking than simply to cover the 

 same area with a sheet of ice. And if commonplace 

 agencies like rain and rivers, frost and snow, can do 

 the former, why may not such agencies as ocean 

 currents, winds, clouds, and aqueous vapour be suf- 

 ficient for the latter ? 



That geological climate should depend on the causes 

 to which we refer cannot appear more improbable to 

 the geologists of the present day than the inference 

 that hills and valleys were formed by atmospheric 

 agencies did to the geologists of the last generation. 

 And there is little doubt that by the next generation 

 the one conclusion will be as freely admitted as the 

 other. 



When a physicist so eminent as Sir Wm. Thomson 

 expresses his decided opinion that the agencies in 

 question are all that are necessary to remove the ice 

 from the Arctic regions, and confer on them a mild 

 and temperate climate, it is to be hoped that the day 



