PLANT LIFE IN THE GREAT ICE AGE 
The Danube valley near Vienna was not covered with 
ice during the glacial epochs, but lay open between the 
ice masses of northern Europe and those which capped 
the Alps. From deposits in this valley, we can recon¬ 
struct the flora which probably grew during the glacial 
age where Vienna now stands. This flora has been 
studied and its appearance described as alpine. Arctic 
plants of today and those of the Alps have much in com¬ 
mon with those of the glacial period. In the soil which 
was free from ice, there grew, during the summer, a 
vegetation reminding us of the Alps and of the Arctic. 
There were such types as the rhododendron, the violet, 
the primrose, the cinquefoil, the saxifrage, and the fleece 
flower. The trees were small pines, birches, beeches and 
rather crippled and dwarfed oaks. Among these plants 
and trees walked gigantic elk and bison, the hairy ele¬ 
phant, rhinoceri, and early man. It was not a pleasant 
climate, like that of the earlier Tertiary and Cretaceous 
times, but the surface of the earth was a great deal more 
impressive, with great mountain ranges towering above 
it. It is a peculiar coincidence that whenever the climate 
is warm and uniform over the earth, the relief is rather 
flat and uninteresting. It is apparently as true in Na¬ 
ture as in human life that we never can have all that 
we would like. 
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