i6o The American Geologist. September, iS99 
The General Proposition.^ 
GIVEN: A heated globe, constituted and circumstanced as the 
earth adtnittedly was and whose surface temperatures, by reason of in- 
ternal heat, are above the boiling point of water, to prove that before its 
surface temperatures can pass under the control of solar heat (/) climatic 
changes must be indepeiident of latitude, and (3) that continental areas 
must be glaciated.^ 
It will be observed that the surface temperatures of a globe 
thus situated are almost wholly controlled by its internal or 
earth heat; for between such surface and any external source, 
a dense cloud of vapor must exist. The fact that direct or 
radiant heat rays are largely absorbed in passing through dense 
fogs and clouds is well known; J therefore, the surface of a 
globe thus situated is protected against both serious loss of its 
own heat and direct exposure to heat from exterior sources. 
The peculiar function of solar heat during the existence 
of controlling quantities of earth heat was to warm the upper 
regions of the atmosphere and the outer cold surface of the 
clouds exposed to its power, thus partly replacing the heat lost 
by radiation into space, and causing the store of earth heat to 
last longer; its function therefore was to conserve the interior 
supply. 
By the conditions of the problem presented, we thus have 
a globe having resident in its mass a finite quantity of heat ex- 
posed to loss principally by means of the gradual expansion of 
water into vapor, and the exposure of this vapor to loss of heat 
*The proposition here stated is applicable to any planet. It is 
probable that Mars has passed through a period corresponding to our 
Ice age; and that Jupiter has not yet reached this stage of climatic de- 
velopment. [See Zenographical Fragments, London. 1891. Also the 
author's views in "Circulation of the Atmosphere of Planets." Trans. 
Technical Society of the Pacific Coast. Vol. XI, No. 4, pp. I27-'I43.] 
tThere were circumstances protecting certain limited areas, such 
as the "Unglaciated Area," in the basin of the Yellowstone river, in 
North America. Here vast and continuous lava overflows in Wyo- 
ming, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, liberated earth heat; which 
heat, borne easterly by the general circulation of the atmosphere, may 
have caused the precipitation upon the "unglaciated area" to be warm 
rains instead of snow. If so, then to this region the animals and 
plants of the Tertiary period must have retreated as glacial conditions 
surrounded them. Thus protected, they could have perpetuated their 
species. In these regions, vast quantities of their remains are found. 
See appendix. 
JMaury. Physical Geography of the Sea, 6th Edition, p. 212, et seq.; 
Croll, Climate and Time, p. 60, et seq.; also. Climate and Cosmology, 
p. 51; Geikie, The Great Ice Age, pp. 800-801. 
