As a very humble student of this subject, I may say that I have been
looking these facts in the face earnestly enough for more than twenty
years, and that I am about as certain that they can only be explained
by ice, as I am that my having got home by rail can only be explained
by steam.
But I think I know what startles you. It is the being asked to
believe in such an enormous change in climate, and in the height of
the land above the sea. Well--it is very astonishing, appalling--all
but incredible, if we had not the facts to prove it. But of the
facts there can be no doubt. There can be no doubt that the climate
of this northern hemisphere has changed enormously more than once.
There can be no doubt that the distribution of land and water, the
shape and size of its continents and seas, have changed again and
again. There can be no doubt that, for instance, long before the age
of ice, the whole North of Europe was much warmer than it is now.
Take Greenland, for instance. Disco Island lies in Baffin's Bay, off
the west coast of Greenland, in latitude 70 degrees, far within the
Arctic circle. Now there certain strata of rock, older than the ice,
have not been destroyed by the grinding of the ice-cap; and they are
full of fossil plants. But of what kind of plants? Of the same
families as now grow in the warmer parts of the United States.
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