The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1892-07-17
IN THE GREAT ICE AGE.
Luxuriant Vegetation That Once
Hourished in Greenland and
Tepid Northern Seas
This Genial Uniformity OF Warmth
at Last Began to Give
Way.

And Indictment Weather Was Over the
Country Varied Behavior Of Ice
Under Varied circumstances
The changes Of terrestrial climate have
been many and various. Myrtlss and tree
ferns once tiourished in Greenland; coral
insects built on the shores of Melville lsl.
and; nautilusss sailed over what must then
have been ths tspid seas about ~spitsbergen.
But with the lapse Of ages the scene
changed. and worss than arctic riRors
spread into regions now enjoying = temper
ate climate. Possibly NOS for the htst
time. The permian was certainly An IN
clement ags, and its inolemency seems even
to have reached the point Of glaciation in
the west Of England md Ireland; yet it
was preceded and succeeded by q long prev
alenes Of tropical conditions. These
sssuredly reigned without Interrupt
ton, in north temperate and
polar regions. throughout the vast expsnse
Of tertiary time. Palms and cyoads then
sprung up in the room OF K and beechss
in England; turtles and crocodiles haunted
English rivers and estuariss; lions, Gle
plants and hyenas roamsd At large over
English dry land. In Switzerland, a mean
temperature equal to that Of North Africa
at the present time is shown by its fossil
fora to have prevailed during the miooene,
or middle tertiary epoch. Anthropoid apes
lived in Germany and France; hR and cin-
namon trees hourished at Dantzic; In
Greenland, up to seventy degrees OF lati-
tude, maRnolias bloomed and vines ripsned
their fruit. while in SpitzberRen and even
in Grinnell Land, within little more than
eight degrees Of the pole, swamp-cypresses
and walnuts, cedars, lines. and irises
lifted their tall heads by the margins of
streams and rivers.
This genial uniformity of warmth may
very we'll have lasted some hundreds OF
thousands of years; but at last it began to
give way. An unfavorable change set In
and progressed. Slowly the seasons grew
persisted, or took to flight after the fashion
of vegetables, by the diffusion of their
seeds to more suitable localities; an AMI
mails which bad long thrived and t.alti-
piled up to, if not within, the Arctic circle.
we're finally compelled to migrate south
form of snow, and became 80 copious that
the summer suns no longer availed to melt
tho wintry deposits; and the continents, by
time compaoted into very much their pres
ent shapes, acquired. year BY year, an
added burden of ice. Eventually:
then. the glacial Hood saomerRed
Dominion of Canada, and a great part OF
the United States, to the actual condition
of Greenland. Ice, in short, appropriated
an immense territory which 1t has since
been obliged to relinquish. Nor Is 1t easy
to say why this was 80. Assuredly, no
theories of general refrigeration can ex-
plain the facts. There was indeed doubt
less a very early time when the earth lived
mainly ON its own heat capital, and took
small account Of the yearly income derived
f ,om the sun. The vicissitudes OF seasons,
and the effects of geographical position,
were then comparatively little felt. a dense
atmosphere serving as a storehouse for
radiations from the interior which reached
the surface no less freely al the poles than
at the eauStoc. Even still, according to
Sir William Thomson's estimate, our globe
loses annually, by diffusion into space OF its
own primitive and irrecoversble supply,
rocky masses equal to itself in
bulk from the temperature of freezing to
that of boiling water. And a very slight
check upon this immense outpouring of
subterranean warmth would unquestiona-
bly, tend to produce equable and genial
Gin 1t66 lII6HDSCtlt6 u AoeAeAACs oAS q
check would be imposed by a trifinR in
crease in the thickness of the earth's at
mospheric covering. which there is every
reason TO suppose was. In the Tar past,
much less pervious to heat rays than 1t IS
now. But variations in the ethc!enoy OF
this cause of terrible warmth cannot be
reokonsd upon to explain all, or nearly all,
tho climatic diversities witnessed to by the
rock strata beneath our feet. Much evil
dsnce is at hand to show that, at any rate
during the more recent geological times,
the gases of our air were mixed apprecla-
bly, in their actual proportions, and were
present in apprecisbly their actual volumes:
Tertiary heat, then, and quaternary cold
alike remain inexplicable from this point OF
view. And, indeed, it must be admitted
that most of the data recently collected,
especially on the other side of the Atlantic,
tell heavily against the most promising ex-
pedients hitherto thought of for clearing
up the mystery of the g. eat ice age.
Ice, although ever, where the same in
substance and qualities, 10 capable OF sur
prisingly varied behavior under varied cir
cumstanoes. 1t owns, too, sundry modes
of origin. Thus. waterloo is formed di-
rsctly and obviously on the surface of lakes,
rivers and seas; but land ice indirectly, out
of compressed snow. And the latter is the
exclusive material of glaciers. 1t il. them,
easily seen that q concurrence of special
conditions is needed to produce them. The
three most indispensable may be described
"a those of provision, production and
preservation. Supplies must be provided by
abundant PRECIPITATION in the form of snow;
the precipitation must take place on high
ground to give gravity the opportunity of
producing "thick-ribbed ice" ont of the
air-wafted feathery ctystals; finally, a low
tenn perAture must preserve the embryo
glacier from premature melting. None Of
these requirements can be evaded. For
want of sufficient snowfall, there are no
glaciers on the Ural mountains; for she
want of sufficient elevations, there are no
glaciers in Newfoundland; owing TO excess
of heat, there are are nc glaciers on Kill
m~anjaro or the Peruvian Andes-EdinburR
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