_India._—Mr. W. T. Blanford, of the Geological Survey of India, states that in beds considered to be of Carboniferous age are found large boulders, some of them as much as 15 feet in diameter. The bed in which these occur is a fine silt, and he refers the deposition of the boulders to ice-action. Within the last three years his views have received singular confirmation in another part of India, where beds of limestone were found striated below certain overlying strata. The probability that these appearances are due, as Mr. Blanford says, to the action of ice, is strengthened by the consideration that about five degrees farther to the north of the district in question rises the cold and high table-land of Thibet, which during a glacial epoch would undoubtedly be covered with ice that might well descend over the plains of India.[167] _Arctic Regions._—A glacial epoch during the Carboniferous age may be indirectly inferred from the probable existence of warm inter-glacial periods, as indicated by the limestones with fossil remains found in arctic regions. That an equable condition of climate extended to near the north pole is proved by the fact that in the arctic regions vast masses of carboniferous limestone, having all the characters of the mountain limestone of England, have been found. “These limestones,” says Mr. Isbister, “are most extensively developed in the north-east extremity of the continent, where they occupy the greater part of the coast-line, from the north side of the Kotzebue Sound to within a few miles of Point Barrow, and form the chief constituent of the lofty and conspicuous headlands of Cape Thomson, Cape Lisburn, and Cape Sabine.”[168] Limestone of the same age occurs extensively along the Mackenzie River. The following fossils have been found in these limestones:—_Terebratula resupinata_,[169] _Lithostrotion basaltiforme_, _Cyathophyllum dianthum_, _C. flexuosum_, _Turbinolia mitrata_, _Productus Martini_,[170] _Dentalium Sarcinula_, _Spiriferi_, _Orthidæ_, and encrinital fragments in the greatest abundance. Among the fossils brought home from Depôt Point, Albert Land, by Sir E. Belcher, Mr. Salter found the following, belonging to the Carboniferous period:—_Fusulina hyperborea_, _Stylastrea inconferta_, _Zaphrentis ovibos_, _Clisiophyllum tumulus_, _Syringopora (Aulopora)_, _Fenestella Arctica_, _Spirifera Keilhavii_, _Productus cora_, _P. semireticulatus_.[171] Coal-beds of Carboniferous age are extensively developed in arctic regions. The fuel is of a highly bituminous character, resembling, says Professor Haughton, the gas coals of Scotland. The occurrence of coal in such high latitudes indicates beyond doubt that a mild and temperate condition of climate must, during some part of the Carboniferous age, have prevailed up to the very pole.