28 
science during the same time. And this must be the casg 
with all those sciences, the foundation of which is firm, and 
where stubborn facts take the place of what we may term 
questionable theories. 
No lengthy mathematical formula can stand against the 
testimony of the hard granite rocks, of the coal beds, and of 
the remains of animals and vegetables, whose habitat is 
now only within those bounds of the earth known as the 
tropics. 
Here, then, is a science, formed upon granite, supported by 
slate, and bearing above it the evidences which could not 
be contradicted. 
There are in Great Britain, in Northern Europe, and in 
America, indisputable evidences that vast animals and 
vegetables did once exist in those localities, and that they 
could not have existed had the climate of the northern 
hemisphere been what it is now. 
The coal beds of England would alone prove this, but 
when in addition there are found nearly the entire remains of 
vast ferns of club mosses, some of which have been discovered 
with stems forty feet in length, and thirteen feet in diameter 
at the base, as was the case in the Jarrow Colliery, and when 
the examination of the flora, co-existent with the coal, shows 
that the cacti, euphorbia, and other tropical plants were 
those which then grew in our northern regions ; and when 
the bones and sometimes the entire remains of vast elephants, 
rhinoceros, hippopotami, alligators, and other heat-loving 
animals are found in latitudes far to the north of Great 
Britain, it does appear most unreasonable to deny that this 
portion of the globe had a much higher temperature in former 
times than it has at the present day. Here, then, was a 
fact, which had to be accounted for. But the matter 
appeared to be so beset with difficulties that a solution had 
never yet been given. 
