Notices of Books. 
1878.] 
89 
that such was ever the case. “ The sands and loams of the 
steppes, though covering extensive areas, in no place seem to 
exhibit the ordinary marks of glacial aCtion. In the north they 
are composed of fine sediment, without a trace of pebbles ; 
going south the pebbles increase in size and numbers ; and 
along the southern boundary of the deposit abutting on the 
mountain chains they contain angular blocks of stone, growing 
larger as the foot of the ranges is approached. The rocks lying 
immediately south of these beds, according to Mr. Bates, show 
also no signs of glacial aCtion. 
To account for this absence of glaciation in North-Eastern 
Asia the author suggests a secular shifting of the axis of the 
earth’s rotation, by which, of course, different regions would in 
turn become circumpolar, and experience the conditions now 
prevailing in Spitzbergen, New Siberia, North Greenland, &c. 
“ It has, however,” he declares, “ in my judgment not been 
proved that these glacial phenomena are contemporaneous, and 
herein lies what I conceive to be the fallacy of the reasoning of 
the glacialists. Perceiving in many portions of the earth’s sur- 
face traces of a state of things only to be attributed to an access 
of intense cold, they have fallen into the error of classing them 
together, and thereby evoking the so-called Glacial epoch. 
Glacial epochs, I believe, have been numerous : nay, I will go 
further, and say that since the beginning of geologic time some 
portion of the earth’s surface has ever been undergoing its own 
glacial stage. Sometimes a greater access of cold occurred 
than at others, and this period of greatest cold had doubtless a 
tendency to oscillate from one hemisphere to another, but I 
think that the evidence afforded by the geology of Northern Asia 
is too strong to permit of the belief in any universal Glacial 
epoch being acceptable. 
“ Traces of a Glacial epoch have been clearly proved to exist 
so far back as the time of the deposit of the Permian rocks. 
The valley of the Godavery, in India, seems then to have been 
within the glaciated area. Nearly, if not quite, contemporaneous 
with this are glacial deposits in Natal. But is this a proof of a 
general Glacial epoch ? I trow not. The observed faCts are 
very similar to what I have pointed out as occurring in Europe 
and Northern Asia in late tertiary times. The former was gla- 
ciated ; the latter enjoyed a milder climate than at present. So 
while India and Southern Africa were having their Glacial epoch 
a diligent search amongst contemporaneous rocks in Australia 
fails to lend any countenance to the vi ew that it extended to 
those regions.” 
This hypothesis, whether it be ultimately found to accord with 
faCts or not, may seem at first sight to have little connection 
with the title which the author has selected. But if various 
portions of the earth’s surface are being successively glaciated 
owing to a secular displacement of the poles, we may expeCt to 
