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Notices of Books. 
259 
time. This brings us to the contemplation of that awful phe- 
nomenon known as the Glacial epoch, or rather epochs ; for two 
distinct attacks of glaciation, each lasting probably for thousands 
of years, are traced by Prof. Morlot from the mode of dispersion 
of the boulders of the Rhone Valley. In the interval between 
the two Glacial periods occurred, in Switzerland, the formation 
of the Lignites. Even this period has left traces of an im- 
portant fauna. The remains of two huge oxen, the urus and 
the auerochs, both mentioned by Seneca and Pliny, can be traced 
to this period. Bones of the Irish elk have been found at 
Isteinerklotz. The woolly rhinoceros and the mammoth have 
been found in not a few Swiss localities, the latter of which 
made its appearance at the end of the second Glacial epoch. As 
to the existence of man in the Interglacial epoch, Prof. Heer 
regards the evidence as doubtful, as far at least as Switzerland 
is concerned. 
Thus far we have given a brief and necessarily imperfedt out- 
line of Prof. Heer’s view of the Palaeontology of Switzerland 
from the Carboniferous to the Glacial epoch. It has been, of 
course, impossible for us to point out more than a mere fraction 
of the interesting fadts here brought together, for no small por- 
tion of which the world is indebted to the untiring zeal and acute 
observation of the author himself, 
Now, however, we enter upon the lessons to be learned from 
the phenomena placed on record — a matter where inference, not 
to say conjecture, is brought into play. It may here be needful 
to call attention to a peculiarity of the edition before us. It 
does not appear to be a literal translation from the original 
German, but bears rather the air — in certain passages at least — 
of an abstract or paraphrase. Indeed we are told, in the Preface, 
that both the German and a French edition were placed in the 
hands of Mr. Dallas for translation, and that the editor, Mr. 
Heywood, in revising the MS. was principally guided by the 
French version. This is to be regretted, since the responsibility 
of the opinions contained in the latter part of the work becomes 
thus divided. In our opinion the German edition should have 
been literally translated, and any valuable peculiarity of the 
French should have been added in the form of annotations or 
appendices. 
Among the speculative questions to which the latter portion 
of this valuable work is devoted, we may select especially three 
— the causes of the glacial epoch, the first appearance of man, 
and the origin of species. 
In the earlier periods, from the Carboniferous to the Tertiary, 
the earth’s climate must have approached most nearly to that of 
the present torrid zone, and Prof. Heer finds no satisfactory evi- 
dence either of increase or decrease of temperature during this 
immense period ; nor, until the Tertiary epoch, is a distribution 
of heat in zones perceptible. Even then the decrease of tem- 
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