200 DISCUSSIONS IN CLIMATOLOGY. 



that during interglacial periods, when those places 

 would be in a condition even more favourable for life 

 than they are at present, they must have been utterly 

 devoid of life, without either plant or animal. This is 

 evident; for the first period of extreme glaciation 

 would as effectually destroy all life in those regions as 

 did the last, and an elevation sufficient to produce a 

 land connection would be as necessary after the first 

 glaciation as it was after the last. The observations 

 of Professor J. Geikie and M. Helland show that the 

 Faroe Islands must have been separated from Scandi- 

 navia during the time of the last great extension of 

 the ice by the same deep trough as now exists : so 

 that, if the Faroe Islands were not totally devoid of 

 all life during interglacial periods, there must, accord- 

 ing to the land-connection theory, have been one or 

 more elevations prior to postglacial times sufficient to 

 unite those islands with the mainland. 



Should it yet be found that Iceland and the Faroes 

 contain interglacial beds with organic remains other 

 than marine, this will so far militate against the 

 theory of a land-connection; for it would prove that 

 there must have been, at least, two immense elevations 

 and subsidences of those regions since the beginning 

 of the Glacial Epoch. Had these consisted simply of 

 oscillations of sea level, depending in some way on 

 the appearance and disappearance of the ice during 

 the glacial and interglacial periods, a repetition of 

 these oscillations is what might have been expected ; 

 but it is different if we suppose that they were simply 

 incidental upheavals and subsidences of the land wholly 

 unconnected with glacial phenomena. There is, in 

 this case, an a priori improbability of even two such 

 changes occurring in the same place since the begin- 

 ning of the glacial epoch. 



