MANY EUROPEAN BOWLDERS PROBABLY TRANSPORTED BY ICE. 543 



own than in any other quarter of the globe, that I will recapitulate what is actually 

 taking place in the southern hemisphere 1 , only transporting in imagination each part to 

 a corresponding latitude in the north. On this supposition, in the southern provinces 

 of France, magnificent forests, entwined by arborescent grapes, and the trees loaded 

 with parasitical plants, would cover the face of the country. In the latitude of Mont 

 Blanc, but on an island as far eastward as central Siberia, tree-ferns and parasitical 

 or chides would thrive amidst the thick woods. Even as far north as central Denmark, 

 humming-birds might be seen fluttering about delicate flowers, and parrots feeding 

 amidst the evergreen woods with which the mountains would be clothed down to the 

 water's edge. Nevertheless, the southern part of Scotland (only removed twice as far 

 to the westward) would present an island, £ almost wholly covered with everlasting 

 snow,' and having each bay terminated by ice-cliffs, from which great masses, yearly 

 detached, would sometimes bear with them fragments of rocks. This island would only 

 boast of one land bird, a little grass and moss ; yet in the same latitude the sea might 

 swarm with living creatures. A chain of mountains, which we will call the Cordillera, 

 running north and south through the Alps (but having an altitude much inferior to the 

 latter), would connect them with the central part of Denmark. Along this whole line 

 nearly every deep sound would end in 'bold and astonishing glaciers.' In the Alps 

 themselves (with their altitude reduced by about a half) we should find proofs of recent 

 elevations, and occasionally terrible earthquakes would cause such masses of ice to be 

 precipitated into the sea, that waves tearing all before them would keep together enor- 

 mous fragments, and pile them up in the corners of the valleys. At other times, 

 icebergs, ' charged with no inconsiderable blocks of granite 3 ,' would be floated from 

 the flanks of Mont Blanc, and then stranded on the outlying islands of the Jura. Who 

 then will deny the possibility of these things having actually taken place in Europe 

 during a former period, and under circumstances known to be different from the pre- 

 sent, when on merely looking to the other hemisphere we see they are among the daily 

 order of events ?" (p. 291 et sea.) 



But Mr. Darwin is not satisfied with showing, that the coasts of former European 

 islands were in all probability the seats of great icebergs ; he pursues his argument 

 further, and in common with other geologists points out the absence of erratic blocks in 

 the intertropical regions (where glaciers and icebergs could not have acted) as a corol- 

 lary of the great geological problem towards solving which he has done so much, by 

 an appeal to existing nature 3 . The above observations, therefore, show, that there are 

 conditions in which ice maybe accumulated and become a motive power ; and that such 



1 It is in the southern hemisphere that we find elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses and lions, as far 

 south as latitude 34° and 35°. In South America the jaguar occurs in 42°, the puma in 53°. 



2 Captain P. King, R.N. uses these words when alluding to the case in Sir G. Eyre's Sound, which 

 Mr. Darwin has more fully described from the information of Mr. Bynoe. 



3 See my note on this point, p. 541. 



3 y2 



