CHAP. Tin.] THE CAUSES OF GLACIAL EPOCHS. 



149 



Greenland is an anomaly in the northern hemisphere, only to 

 be explained by the fact that cold currents from the polar area 

 flow down both sides of it. In Eastern Asia we have the lofty 

 Stanivoi Mountains in the same latitude as the southern part 

 of Greenland, which, though their summits are covered with 

 perpetual snow, give rise to no ice-sheet, and, apparently, even 

 to no important glaciers ; — a fact undoubtedly connected with 

 the warm Japan current flowing partially into the Sea of 

 Okhotsk. So in North-west America we have the lofty coast 

 range, culminating in Mt. St. Elias, nearly 15,000 feet high, and 

 an extensive tract of high land to the north and north-west, with 

 glaciers comparable in size with those of New Zealand, although 

 situated in Lat. 60° instead of in Lat. 45°. Here, too, we have 

 the main body of the Japan current turning east and south, and 

 thus producing a mild climate, little inferior to that of Norway, 

 warmed by the Gulf Stream. We thus have it made clear that 

 could the two Arctic currents be diverted from Greenland, that 

 country would become free from ice, and might even be com- 

 pletely forest-clad and inhabitable ; while, if the Japan current 

 were to be diverted from the coast of North America and a cold 

 current come out of Behring's Strait, the entire north-western 

 extremity of America would even now become buried in ice. 



Now it is the opinion of the best American geologists that 

 during the height of the glacial epoch North-eastern America 

 was considerabl}^ elevated.^ This elevation would bring the 

 wide area of the banks of Newfoundland far above water, 

 causing the American coast to stretch out in an immense curve 

 to a point more than 600 miles east of Halifax ; and this would 

 certainly divert much of the greatly reduced Gulf Stream straight 

 across to the coast of Spain. The consequence of such a state 

 of things would probably be that the southward flowing Arctic 

 currents would be much reduced in velocity ; and the enormous 

 quantity of icebergs continually produced by the ice-sheets of 

 all the lands bordering the North Atlantic would hang about 

 their shores and the adjacent seas, filling them with a dense 

 ice-pack, far surpassing that of the Antarctic regions, and chilling 

 the atmosphere so as to produce constant clouds and fog with 

 1 Dana's Manual of Geology, 2ncl Edition, p. 540. 



