arnestly 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. Even
a tulip-tree has been found among them. Now how is this to be
explained?

Either we must say that the climate of Greenland was then so much
warmer than now, that it had summers probably as hot as those of New
York; or we must say that these leaves and stems were floated thither
from the United States. But if we say the latter, we must allow a
change in the shape of the land which is enormous. For nothing now
can float northward from the United States into Baffin's Bay. The
polar current sets OUT of Baffin's Bay southward, bringing icebergs
down, not leaves up, through Davis's Straits. And in any case we
must allow that the hills of Disco Island were then the bottom of a
sea: or how would the leaves have been deposited in them at all?

So much for the change of climate and land which can be proved to
have gone on in Greenland. It has become colder. Why should it not
some day become warmer again?

Now for England. It can be proved, as far as common sense can prove
anything, that England was, before the age of ice, much warmer than
it is now, and grew gradually cooler and cooler, just as, while the
age of ice was dying out, it