presiuknt’s address. 
1G3 
Scandinavian sense, ever existed, and where tlie state of the 
land from the Jurassic period onwards was indeed subject to 
some changes, hut to none of the tliorough-going mundane 
revolutions which in former times geologists loved to depict 
in .so bright colours.”* 
There is consei[uently no evidence for assuming that, during the 
e.xtension of the Glacial episode in Scandinavia, Great Britain, and 
North America, the climate of Siberia ililfered very greatly from 
what it is now. Presumably it must have been warmer, for the land 
at that time supported vast herds of Mammoths, Itbinoceroses, and 
other largo mammals whoso remains aro found in the tundras 
of Siberia, and the more northern New Siberian Islands ; and 
doubtless, then as now, the discharge of heated w’ater from the 
rivers of northern Asia kept back the Polar ice. If wo are correct in 
assuming that one half of the northern terrestrial hemisphere shows 
no trace of the extension of the glacial ice-cap — and the evidence at 
our command appears to be conclusive on this point — whilst the 
other half does, wo can hardly rely on the theory, that changes in 
the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit, even with the indirect physical 
agencies thereby engendered, could account for the Glacial epoch 
in north-western Europe and North America. If the Glacial epoch 
was due to incidences connected with the eccentricity of the Earth’s 
orbit, surely the extension of the glaciated area in the northern 
hemisphere would have been circumpolar, and not semi-spherical. 
We must therefore look to a solution of the problem by changes 
in the relative positions of land and water. 
The existence of a Miocene continent in the area now occupied 
by the Polar basin seems to be highly probable. There is certainly 
some evidence that the Tertiary area extended from Greenland, 
through Iceland and the Fjeroe Isles, to our Hebrides. Such a 
distribution of land would have barred, or greatly limited, the 
ingress of the Atlantic waters. As a result of the secular cooling 
of the globe during the Miocene and Pliocene periods, the Pole 
would certainly become the first part of our northern hemisphere 
* Nordenskiold, ‘Voyage of the Vega’ (Eng. Edition), vol. ii. p. 250. 
M 2 
