I should have liked to have told you more about this bygone age of
ice. I should have liked to say something to you on the curious
question--which is still an open one--whether there were not two ages
of ice; whether the climate here did not, after perhaps thousands of
years of Arctic cold, soften somewhat for a while--a few thousand
years, perhaps--and then harden again into a second age of ice,
somewhat less severe, probably, than the first. I should have liked
to have hinted at the probable causes of this change--indeed, of the
age of ice altogether--whether it was caused by a change in the
distribution of land and water, or by change in the height and size
of these islands, which made them large enough, and high enough, to
carry a sheet of eternal snow inland; or whether, finally, the age of
ice was caused by an actual change in the position of the whole
planet with regard to its orbit round the sun--shifting at once the
poles and the tropics; a deep question that latter, on which
astronomers, whose business it is, are still at work, and on which,
ere young folk are old, they will have discovered, I expect, some
startling facts. On that last question, I, being no astronomer,
cannot speak. But I should have liked to have said somewhat on
matters on which I have knowledge enough, at least, to teach you how
much there is to be learnt.
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