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THE GEOLOGIST. 



roads : one would have thought a shower of them had fallen from the sky. I 

 have explained this by the passage of an army, of which each warrior would 

 believe himself under the obligation of throwing one of these stones, more or 

 less worked, on the sepulchre of a chief, or on the place where he had been 

 killed. And the multitude of signs is only a small part of those that existed, 

 for aU those, the material of which was woody, soft, or soluble, have dis- 

 appeared." 



Resuming the previous topic, M. de Perthes concludes his chapter with the 

 following remarks : — 



" Icebergs floating from one sea to another will explain not only the pre- 

 sence of rocks and of minerals in countries where there exists neither quarry 

 nor vein of them, but also the mysteries of spontaneous vegetation, or the sudden 

 appearance of beings previously unknown. Bulbs, grain, germs, eggs, chrysa- 

 lides, and larvse even, protected by those walls of ice, braving all temperatures, 

 all shocks, all contacts, could they not preserve ahnost indefinitely their vital 

 power and their productive virtue ? Have there been made in this respect all 

 possible experiments, and is it known up to what point ice is the protector of 

 life ? Snow, is it not so ? Are there not numerous vegetables and even 

 animals that it defends from the destruction which would be brought upon 

 them by the sudden variations of the atmosphere ? Does even the most intense 

 frost kill certain creatures ? No ; and frogs frozen to the extent that there 

 limbs break like glass have been re-animated by a gradual transition from this 

 excessive cold to a moderate temperature. In our ponds are there not fish 

 and insects seized by the ice, which, seemingly dead, revive in the spring ? 



" One ought also to look at the question under its purely geological relations, 

 and decide if the ideas that I have mooted on the transport of erratic blocks 

 by floating icebergs could not be applied to the formation of certain banks or 

 deposits. That would inform us how these worked stones are to be found on 

 points very far from those whence they had come. 



"After tlie necessary investigations on the movement of the glaciers of the 

 Alps, on the augmentation or the reduction of their masses, could we not 

 establish some calculation as to the greater or less antiquity of the last great 

 invasion of the snows, and of the inundation which would have resulted from 

 their sudden or gradual melting ? If a part of our rivers were fed by the 

 drauiing of snow-water, it is evident that the mass of the waters of these 

 rivers ought to have decreased with the diminution of the faU of snow. 

 Everything tends to show that water-courses, at present hardly navigable, have 

 been deep rivers. Our largest European rivers, if one judge by the extent of 

 their valleys, which in theii' entireties ought to be theii' ancient beds, had thus 

 ten times more water than- now-a-days. This reduction has been attributed 

 to the destruction of forests, which certainly ought to go for something ; but, 

 according to my ideas, the decrease of the mass of snows has contributed much 

 more to this result. Lastly, why does less snow fall than formerly ? These 

 deluges of snow, are they periodical ? Should we see again some day the 

 earth re-covered with this winding-sheet, that for ages to come would tlu-ow 

 it into a sleep of death from which it would only be drawn by another watery 

 dchige, would this deluge, by its fecundating oose, restore to it its vegeta- 

 tive heat, and its first fertility ? Great questions. 



" Without seeking to read the future, let us profit by what we have under 

 our eyes to enlighten the past, and let us not reject the Kght which we have." 



(To be coutliiiied.) 



