KAMSAY — OX GLACIERS IN WALES. 
531 
question was, however, raised in this unprinted matter which I do 
not yet remember to have seen in any published paper, and I now 
mention it because of late the attention of many persons have been 
more and more di'awn to the discussion of the subject. 
The opinion I then held was that cold great enough to have pro- 
duced the first and larger set of glaciers in our o^vn neighbouring 
coimties might have arisen from an elevation of land equal to, or 
greater than, the amount of depression that it undenvent during the 
middle portion of the glacial period. I then stated " that I hold it 
as a sound doctrine in Geology that any amount of depression that 
any part of the earth's crust may have undergone, may have been 
equalled there or elsewhere by an opposite movement, giving an 
equivalent amount of deviation. Bearing this in mind, it seems 
within the limit of fair speculation to suppose a possible upheaval, 
equal to, or exceeding the above-mentioned kno^vn amount of de- 
pression (2,300 feet*) — an elevation probably sufficient to have pro- 
duced a degree of cold, taken in connection w4th other conditions, 
equal to the production of glaciers on the first and greater scale. 
This land (Wales) would then consist of a lofty centi^al cluster of 
mountains, with numerous valley's, down which the larger glaciers 
flowed, debouching upon an elevated plateau of land, part of which 
now fonns Anglesea and the sea-boards of C am aervon shire. A 
further extension of this flat, dotted by other clusters of mountains, 
now fonning the high grounds of Bntain and Ireland, would spread 
as far as the 100 fathom line indicated by Sir Henry De La Beche 
in his ' Theoretical Researches,' including the German Ocean, the 
the Irish Sea, and a wide tract of the Atlantic stretching northward 
along the coast of Norway." 
In 1846 the late Professor E. Forbes published his celebrated 
memoir " On the Distribution of the Fauna and Flora of the British 
Islands," in which, in consequence of a partial ideaUty in the littoral 
fauna of the North of Europe and of North America, he inferred a 
fonner dire^jt union of these continents across the area now occupied 
by the North Atlantic. Generalizing on this idea, I conceived it 
probable that this northern continent might have stretched so far 
south "that the mean annual Isothermal line, and the January 
Isothermal line, that in Central Asia and in North America run nearly 
east and west in latitudes about 55 degs. and 38 degs., would be 
continued in the same direction across the continent instead of curv- 
ing northw^ards, as they now do, under the influence of the Gulf 
Stream. The mean annual Isothennal hne of 32 degs. Fahr. would 
then pass across the south of Scotland, and the January line near 
the south of Spain. Across the Altai Mountains, in Central Asia, at 
points between these lines in latitudes 49 degs. to 51 degs. north, 
the snow-line is 7,034 feet above the sea, and in those mountains 
(from 9,000 to 10,000 feet high) at the Colonne de Katoune, there 
* Meutioned in a previous pait of the Memoii-, and printed in tLc Society' h 
Journal. 
