118 DISCUSSIONS IN CLIMATOLOGY. 



were in perihelion, and there was a fall of sea-level, 

 due, in all likelihood, to the preponderance of ice on 

 the southern hemisphere. But this is not all: the 

 strata which underlie the buried Forest bear witness 

 to another rise of sea-level. 



These changes of climatic conditions and oscillations 

 of sea-level, which took place during the latter part of 

 the Postglacial period, are just what should have taken 

 place on the supposition that they were the result of 

 those astronomical and physical agents which we have 

 been considering. Thus, immediately preceding the 

 Present period, we have that of the 25- and 40-feet * 

 raised beaches and the Carse deposits, which indicate 

 that the climate was then more severe and the sea 

 somewhat colder and standing at a higher level than 

 at present. Now, during this Kecent period, our 

 northern winter solstice was in aphelion, and the 

 condition of things is exactly what, according to 

 theory, we ought to expect. 



Preceding the period of the Carse-clays came that 

 of the buried Forest, when the climate was even more 

 genial and equable than at the present day, the Gulf 

 Stream larger and the sea at a lower level than now. 

 Now, during this period, the winter solstice was in 

 perihelion, and the eccentricity somewhat greater than 

 at present ; and here again we have exactly that con- 

 dition of things which, according to theory, we ought 

 to expect. It would be very singular indeed were 

 there no physical connection between these conditions 

 and the causes to which I have been attributing them. 

 It would certainly be singular were all these coin- 



* At one time I thought ('Climate and Time,' p. 409) that the 

 40-feet beach might belong to a period 50,000 years prior to the 

 Carse-clays ; but I am now satisfied that the two beaches both belong 

 to the period of the Carse-clays, as Professor J. Geikie has shown in 

 "Prehistoric Europe," Chap. XVI. 



