174 
to Britain and the North of Europe at this period, says, that 
^^the large mammalia of the earlier tertiaries disappeared and 
the land was submerged to the extent of several thousand 
feet/^ * 
14. We have evidence, says Mr. Charles Dar\vin,f of almost 
every conceivable kind, organic and inorganic, that within 
a very recent geological period, central Europe .... suffered 
under an Arctic climate, and that the ruins of a house burnt 
by fire do not tell their tale more plainly than do the moun- 
tains of Scotland and Wales tell their tale of glaciation,^'’ and 
the evidence he traces from the west of Britain to the Ural 
range. Crossing the English Channel, Sir Henry de la BecheJ 
found good evidence that the north of France had been 1,000 
feet at least beneath the icy sea, whilst Mr. Darwin traces the 
evidence of Arctic conditions to the Pyrenees. On the Jura 
limestone range I measured an erratic block of granite, 
60 feet long, b^y 40 feet wide and 23 feet high. The granite 
is peculiar ; it contains talc in the place of mica, which rock is 
not found in situ within sixty or seventy miles of this boulder. 
It must have been transported from the Mont Blanc range of 
the Alps. Sir Boderick Murchison supposed that this and 
other erratics on the Jura were floated when the great strath 
of Switzerland was under water. He thought that the granite 
blocks were borne on ice floats, but Sir Charles Lyell and 
geologists generally believe that they were carried on the 
breast of an enormous glacier, as some of us have seen blocks 
of granite being carried at the present day. I have tried on 
the spot to trace the course that the glacier must have taken 
down the Bhone valley, cross Lake Leman, where now stands 
the Castle of Chillon, and then over the hills that range at the 
back of the lovely Yevey and across the country to the present 
Lakeof Neufchatel, where 800 feet above the lake lies the erratic 
block in question. I have been on many Alpine glaciers and 
been overawed with their majesty, but the largest of them is 
insignificant when compared with the glacier that could have 
carried this and other blocks of granite from the Alps to the 
Jura. At that time all Switzerland, except its mountains, 
must have been under ice, and its fauna must have for the most 
part perished, as the Alpine ranges would prevent a southern 
retreat. As we might expect, the Alps not only sent forth 
their glaciers northward, but also southward, covering the 
plains of Italy. Mr. Darwin calls attention to the altered 
* Dr. Page, Text Book of Geology, p. 161. 
t Origin of Species, sixth edition, p. 330. 
X De la B^che, Geological Observer, p. 256. 
