1889.] THE DISPLACEMENT OF BEACH-LINES. 87 



position agrees well with the opinion expressed by Stress, 1 that 

 the great transgressions alternated, in the lands bordering 

 the Tertiary Mediterranean and those around the Northern 

 Seas. 



The hypothesis does not demand that the upheavals should 

 be everywhere contemporaneous, only that they should occur 

 especially after long periods with a higher mean value of the 

 eccentricity; and that was the case both with the great Mio- 

 cene rising in middle latitudes and the great Quaternary in 

 higher ones. 



We will next inquire, whether the hypothesis can account 

 for the known climatic changes. To do so we will first look 

 at the map of the world. 



The Pacific ocean corresponds with the Polar sea, only 

 through the narrow and shallow Behring Strait. No great warm 

 current is able to pass through this. But the Atlantic is open 

 towards the North, and the warm North- Atlantic current washes 

 the shores of Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla. Its effects are felt 

 far into the Polar seas. 



The mighty influence of these geographical facts is shown 

 °J the isothermal lines. In the Northern Atlantic they bend 

 ■ tongues to the North, but at the Behring Strait they run 

 Parallel to the circles of latitude. 



The changes of climate in Northern latitudes, during Ter- 

 ttry and Quaternary times, were, shortly, the following: 



The Ice Age was much more intense on both sides of the 

 - orthem Atlantic than in the Pacific. In North-western Europe, 

 °n the Faroe Islands, in Iceland, Greenland and Eastern North 

 enca » the ice had an immense extension. In Eastern Asia 



