1G4 
rUESlDENT’s ADDRESS. 
to feel the effects of glaciation. If instead of a sea-surface as now 
exists, and which removes to, and dissolves in more southern 
latitudes, the ice and snow of the Polar basin, the precipitation of 
frozen vapour was on a continental area at the North Pole, the 
result in the course of time would be as enormous an accumula- 
tion of ice there as wo now find at the South Pole. Under such 
circumstances, the extension of the ice-cap over Scandinavia and 
Great Britain would not be difficult to conceive, when we have 
before our eyes the great island-continent of Greenland, lying to a 
great extent in the same parallels as Scandinavia, clad with an ice- 
cap on as gigantic a scale as we need imagine ever existed in 
north-western Europe. If wo fix our attention on a map of 
the northern hemisphere, and trace on its surface the area in 
north-western Europe where evidences of the Glacial epoch are 
certainly to be found, the observer cannot fail to be struck with 
the relatively insignificant proportions of that area, when compared 
with the great land-masses of Europe and Asia, north of the fiftieth 
parallel, which shows no sign of an abnormal Glacial episode. 
If the present Atlantic currents were changed so as to divert 
the cold Polar current from the east coast of Greenland to 
the North Cape of Europe, and then continue its course along 
the west coast of Norway, Shetland, and the Hebrides, 
Avhilst the Gulf Stream bathed the east shores of Greenland, 
Scandinavia would be glaciated, and East Greenland would 
doubtless enjoy, as far as 70° N. lat., the present climate 
of Norway; whilst if a land area prevented oceanic circulation 
around the North Pole, and barred out the heated waters 
of the Atlantic, Scandinavia would be glaciated as well as 
Greenland. 
Admitting the existence of a Polar Miocene continent, we can 
easily conceive that, during the long period of geologic time 
represented by the Pliocene epoch, the accumulation of snow and 
ice-cap must have been enormous, until at length the Polar land, 
oppressed by its superincumbent weight of glaciation, gradually 
sunk, and admitted the waters of the Atlantic Ocean to the Polar 
