322 G arhoniferous Glaciation, Etc. — White. 
being proved. Undoubtedly the arguments set forth by Ram- 
say and Godwin-Austen in favor of a glacial epoch in the Per- 
mian of Europe, together with the known change of climate at 
that time have exercised a powerful influence on the subse- 
quent opinions of Sutherland, Feistmantel, and others, as to 
the age of the Indo-Capricornian glaciation, causing them at 
first to place it rather later in geologic time than subsequent 
knowledge of the circumstances has justified. 
Glossopteris- Flora. — From the time that the resemblance 
of the great lower mesozoic sequences of terranes in Africa, 
India, and Australia was understood, the theory of an Africo- 
Indo-Australian continent has prevailed ; and the probability 
of its existence is as generally accepted as the existence of the 
paleontologic anomalies which it contains. The consensus of 
opinion, based on both palseontological and stratigraphical 
grounds, is almost unanimous in the conclusion that all the 
evidence not only proves unquestionably the former connec- 
tion of the continents, but that it also indicates the strongest 
probability of the union having comprised, at one time, one 
great continent, over a part of which now lies the Indian 
ocean. This continent, nearly as large, at least, as Europe and 
Asia together, was covered with an enormous thickness of 
nearly horizontal and mostly freshwater beds, and populated 
in the history of its formation with a fauna comparatively 
widely distributed, and with its own peculiar and isolated 
flora. It is probable that, as the Europeo-Asiatic continent 
arose, this ancient continent was gradually overflowed, with 
occasional subsidences, until finally only fragments remained 
with newer terranes of later mesozoic or Tertiary age along 
their margins. 
The causes of the glacial cold which visited this continent 
at that time are still a subject of discussion ;' but it is well- 
nigh certain that glaciers existed then within the tropics, and 
that they descended to the sea-level at points that are now within 
27° of the equator.^ With the increasing severity of the climate 
the plant life, which is always the most sensitive to climatic 
eff'ects, took on new forms, capable of resisting the changes, and 
* The majority of the writers on the subject seem to favor change of 
latitude, though many support the theory of change in ocean currents. 
Should the presence of Carboniferous glaciation be proved in South 
America, then the question will undoubtedly be given to those who 
support the theory of the earth's changes in perihelion. 
2 See Oldham R. D. in Geol. Mag. [3], in, 1886, p. 303. 
