Chap. XI. 
DUKIXG THE GLACIAL PERIOD. 
373 
But we must return to our more immediate subject, 
the Glacial period. I am convinced that Forbes’s view 
may be largely extended. In Europe we have the 
plainest evidence of the cold period, from the western 
shores of Britain to the Oural range, and southward to 
the Pyrenees. We may infer from the frozen mammals 
and nature of the mountain vegetation, that Siberia was 
similarly affected. Along the Himalaya, at points 900 
miles apart, glaciers have left the marks of their former 
low descent; and in Sikkim, Dr. Hooker saw maize 
growing on gigantic ancient moraines. South of the 
equator, we have some direct evidence of former glacial 
action in New Zealand; and the same plants, found on 
widely separated mountains in that island, tell the same 
story. « If one account which has been published can be 
trusted, we have direct evidence of glacial action in the 
south-eastern corner of Australia. 
Looking to America; in the northern half, ice-borne 
fragments of rock have been observed on the eastern 
side 'as far south as lat. 36°-37°, and on the shores of 
the Pacific, where the climate is now so different, as 
far south as lat. 46^ ; erratic boulders have, also, been 
noticed on the Eocky Mountains. In the Cordillera 
of Equatorial South America, glaciers once extended 
far below their present level. In central Chili I was 
astonished at the structure of a vast mound of detritus, 
about 800 feet in height, crossing a valley of the 
Andes; and this I now feel convinced was a gigantic 
moraine, left far below any existing glacier. Further 
south on both sides of the continent, from lat. 41° to the 
southernmost extremity, we have the clearest evidence 
of former glacial action, in huge boulders transported 
far from their parent source. 
We do not know that the Glacial epoch was strictly 
simultaneous at these several far distant points on oppo- 
