president’s address. 
119 
have contended, lor if so, what are now the Poles might liave been 
in some very difTerent position of the earth’s surface. The theory 
of the non-stability of the earth’s a.\is was advanced in order to 
account for the discovery of a rich temperate, or semi-tropical 
fossil flora, in Miocene formations, in extremely high Arctic 
latitudes ; and though many eminent geologists have given their 
adhesion to the view that the ancient Miocene flora of the Polar 
area, owing to the absence of sunlight in winter, could only have 
existed under such circumstances, yet an examination into existing 
facts in connection with the present distribution of plant and animal 
life in close propinquity to the North Polo, proves to us that the 
long absence of sunlight during winter is no bar to its present 
survival and propagation, ami conse<iuontly there is no reason to 
adduce that it ever was. To this point I will refer in greater 
detail later on. The theory of the shifting of the earth’s axis of 
rotation has been exhaustively discussed of late years by several of 
the most eminent mathematicians of our day in Great Pritain, 
notably by Sir William Thomson, Professor Samuel Haughton, 
and ^Ir. George Parwin. All these great authorities seem to admit 
the physical possibility of some change taking place in the axis of 
rotation by certain stupendous changes or deformations in the land 
surfaces in the earlier ages of our planet, but they all appear to 
agree that there is no evidence of such change, certainly not during 
geological history. It is an indisputable fact that the sequence of 
the geological record in the far north agrees with that of the re.st 
of the Northern Hemisphere. We find there in the same succession 
the Primary or Palmozoic, the Secondary or ^Mesozoic, the Tertiary 
or Cainozoic, and the Quaternary or Post-Tertiary formations. 
Certainly great gaps and chasms still remain to be filled up in the 
succession of the geologic record ; but that is not to be wondered 
at, when we consider that the greater portion of the Polar area is 
at the present time submerged, and that research has only been 
possible in the ice and snow clad regions of Spitsbergen, Novaya- 
Zemlya, Grinncll Land, Greenland, and the islands of the Parry 
Archipelago, mere fragments of the great land extension which in 
the Tertiary epoch must have occupied the Polar area. Of late 
