rocks covered with any amount of vegetation worth
mentioning; and, moreover, the sides of the mountains on the shore itself
frequently present perpendicular sections, which everywhere expose their
bare surfaces to the investigator. The knowledge of a mountain's geognostic
character, at which one, in the more southerly countries, can only arrive
after long and laborious researches, removal of soil and the like, is here
gained almost at the first glance; and as we have never seen in Spitzbergen
nor in Greenland, in these sections often many miles in length, and
including one may say all formations from the Silurian to the Tertiary, any
boulders even as large as a child's head, there is not the smallest
probability that strata of any considerable extent, containing boulders,
are to be found in the polar tracts previous to the middle of the Tertiary
period. Since, then, both an examination of the geognostic condition, and
an investigation of the fossil flora and fauna of the polar lands, show no
signs of a glacial era having existed in those parts before the termination
of the Miocene period, we are fully justified in rejecting, on the evidence
of actual observation, the hypotheses founded on purely theoretical
speculations, which assume the many times repeated alternation of warm and
glacial climates between the present time and the earliest geological
ages."[18] And again, in his _Sketch of the Geology of Spitzbergen_, after
describing the various formations down to the Miocene, he says: "All the
fossils found in the foregoing strata show that Spitzbergen, during former
geological ages, enjoyed a magnificent climate, which indeed was somewhat
colder during the Miocene period, but was still favourable for an
extraordinarily abundant vegetation, much more luxuriant than that which
now occurs even in the southern part of Scandinavia: and I have in those
strata sought in vain for any sign, that, as some geologists have of late
endeavoured to render probable, these favourable climatic conditions have
been broken off {78} by intervals of ancient glacial periods. The profiles
I have had the opportunity to examine during my various Spitzbergen
expeditions would certainly, if laid down on a line, occupy an extent of _a
thousand English miles_; and if any former glacial period had existed in
this region, there ought to have been some trace to be observed of erratic
blocks, or other formations which distinguish glacial action. But this