536 THE PLEISTOCENE EPOCH 



Seas, and covering Finland, northwestern Russia, the lowlands of 

 Germany, and extending to England. The Highlands of Scotland 

 were a secondary centre, its ice-sheets flowing into the North Sea 

 and uniting with those from Scandinavia, and westward to the 

 ocean. The Irish Channel was also filled up. From the south- 

 west of Ireland to the North Cape of Norway, a distance of 2000 

 miles, was probably a continuous wall of ice fronting the sea, like 

 that which now surrounds the Antarctic continent. At the same time 

 the Alps were the seat of enormous glaciers, only the highest peaks 

 rising above the sheets of ice, and these great glaciers extended 

 far out from the foot of the mountains, covering all the lowlands 

 of Switzerland and extending from Austria and Bavaria, on the 

 east, to the Rhone valley near Lyons, on the west. The high 

 plateau of Asia, from the Himalayas to Bering's Sea, shows evi- 

 dences of glaciation, and great valley glaciers were formed on the 

 southern slopes of the Himalayas, extending in some places to 

 within 2000 feet of the sea-level. 



A second great Glacial stage (the fourth Glacial or Mecklen- 

 burgian of James Geikie) is generally recognized in Europe and 

 correlated with the Wisconsin stage of America. This ice-sheet 

 . was much less extensive than the former one, being confined prin- 

 cipally to Finland, Scandinavia, the Baltic Sea, which it filled, 

 Denmark, and a little of north Germany. The prevailing motion 

 of this sheet was from east to west. The Alpine glaciers were 

 also extended far beyond their present limits, but not so widely as 

 before. 



Following the Mecklenburgian stage came alternating periods 

 of milder and colder climates, the fourth and fifth Interglacial, 

 and fifth and sixth Glacial stages of Geikie, the Glacial stages 

 marked, not by the formation of great continental ice-sheets, but 

 by the extension or recrudescence of local snow-fields and valley 

 glaciers. Oscillations of level also occurred along the coasts, 

 allowing limited transgressions of the sea. 



No evidence of continental ice-sheets has been found in the 

 Southern Hemisphere, but high mountains like the Andes, the 

 New Zealand Alps, and the Australian Alps had very large glaciers, 



