CONTAINING- FLINT IMPLEMENTS, AND ON THE LOESS. 
291 
from the tropics to the Arctic zone (it being but 17 inches at St. Petersburg*, and 76 
inches at the tropics), we might expect the rainfall to have been less, rather than 
greater than at present, in the subglacial period. But in cases, whatever the latitude, 
where we have cold surfaces presented to vapour-laden sea-winds, as in the mountainous 
districts of the north-west of Spain, in our own lake districts, and in Scandinavia, we 
find a very heavy rainfall, it being 82 inches at Bergen and 104 inches .in Westmoreland. 
At Sitka also, in lat. 57° N., the rainfall is almost constant. 
But even if a greater rainfall be problematical, a greater concentration of it cannot 
he so considered : it would follow as a necessary consequence of the low winter tem- 
perature. Sir 11, Murchison f, speaking of the appearance of part of Russia in the 
spring time, makes the following apposite remark : “ The enormous volume of water, 
by which large portions of the surface are still covered at every annual melting of the 
snows, can scarcely be imagined except by those who have travelled (we may say sailed) 
over some of the central and southern countries in the spring season, when to the eye 
of the geologist the lands seem to be emerging like isles and promontories on all sides 
from beneath the waters. It is then that each broad valley is, for six weeks or more, 
in a condition similar to that which we can imagine to have been the state of England, 
France, and other countries, when their streams, instead of occupying their present 
beds, were lake rivers or estuaries of great width, wherein many of the old gravel and 
sand banks of geologists were accumulated, and in which the bones of extinct mammals 
are found. The height of the waters during this annual inundation can indeed be 
exactly read off wherever any great stream has rocky banks. In gorges we have 
occasionally noted the spring high-water mark as having been 40 feet above the dry 
summer level.” 
A very similar observation is made by Baron Wrangell J, who says, “ the overflowing 
of many of the rivers on either side of the Ural Chain impeded our journey, but made 
us amends by the variety which was thus given to the landscape — the valleys being all 
changed into lakes, and the rising grounds forming green islands.” This happens in a 
country where the rainfall is very small. It is still less in Siberia. Many cases in point 
are mentioned by the same author in speaking of the rivers of the latter country, 
and he remarks that the “ overflowings of the rivers take place more or less every 
year;” that “on the 22nd of May the ice, which had covered the river for 259 days, 
broke up. On the 26th the usual inundation followed, forcing us to take refuge with 
all our goods on the flat roofs of the houses, there to await the termination of the 
flood.” 
Travellers in the Arctic regions of America make the same remarks ; but I need not 
here multiply cases, as the fact is well known, and can be readily observed in most 
* The Scandinavian range of mountains diminish the rainfall over a considerable part of north-western 
Europe by freeing the warm and damp westerly winds of their moisture. 
t The Geology of Eussia in Europe and the Ural Mountains : London, 1846, p. 572. 
t Narrative of an Expedition to the Polar Sea ; edited by General Sabine : 2nd edit. pp. 5, 63, & 258. 
