170 DISCUSSIONS IN CLIMATOLOGY. 



could have reached. For this very same reason the 

 fact remained so long unobserved that the low-lying 

 ground of Caithness had been glaciated by land-ice 

 from Scandinavia, filling the entire Baltic and the North 

 Sea. Many similar cases might be adduced where the 

 marks of glaciation remained long unobserved, either 

 because no special search had been made for them, 

 or because they were under conditions in which 

 they were not expected to be found. It is very 

 probable that when the Tertiary deposits are carefully 

 examined, with the special object of ascertaining 

 whether or not they contain evidence of glaciation, 

 geologists may be led to a different conclusion 

 regarding the supposed uniformly warm character of 

 the climate of that period. They may possibly find 

 that, after all, the Tertiary beds do contain boulders 

 and foreign material, indicating the existence of glacial 

 conditions during the period. 



Considerable importance has been attached to the 

 statement of Professor Nordenskjold that he failed to 

 observe in the stratified deposits of Greenland and 

 Spitzbergen any evidence whatever of former glaciation 

 in those regions. " We have never seen," he says, " in 

 Spitzbergen nor in Greenland, in these sections often 

 many miles in length, and including, one may say, all 

 formations from the Silurian to the Tertiary, any 

 boulders even as large as a child's head. There is not 

 the smallest probability that strata of any considerable 

 extent containing boulders are to be found in the 

 polar tracts previous to the middle of the Tertiary 

 period. Both an examination of the geognostic 

 condition and an investigation of the fossil flora and 

 fauna of the polar lands, show no signs of a glacial era 

 having existed in those parts before the termination of 

 the Miocene period."* That Professor Nordenskjold 



* "Geological Magazine," 1875, p. 53L 



