Let it be noted further that this lowering of the temperature--this displacement of climatic zones, was experienced over the whole continent--extending on the one hand south into Africa, and on the other east into Asia. But while the conditions in northern and central Europe were markedly glacial, further south only more or less isolated snow-capped mountains and local glaciers appeared--such, for example, as those of the Sierra Nevada, the Apennines, Corsica, the Atlas, the Lebanon, etc. In connection with these facts we may note also that the Azores were reached by floating ice; and I need only refer in a word to the evidence of cold wet conditions as furnished by the plant and animal remains of the Pleistocene tufas, alluvia, and peat of southern Europe. Again in north Africa and Syria we find, in desiccated regions, widespread fluviatile accumulations, which, in the opinion of a number of competent observers, are indicative of rainy conditions contemporaneous with the Glacial period of Europe. When we compare the conditions of the Ice Age with those of the present we are struck with the fact that the former were only an exaggeration of the latter. The development of glaciation was in strict accordance with existing conditions. Thus in Pleistocene times North America was more extensively glaciated than northern Europe, just as to-day Greenland shows more snow and ice than Scandinavia. No traces of glaciation have been observed as yet in northern Asia or in northern Alaska, and to-day the only glaciers and ice-sheets that exist in northern regions are confined to the formerly glaciated areas. Again, in Pleistocene Europe glacial phenomena were more strongly developed in the west than in the east. Large glaciers, for example, existed in central France, and a considerable ice-flow poured into the basin of the Douro. But in the same latitudes of eastern Europe we meet with few or no traces of ice-action. Again, the Vosges appear to have been more severely glaciated than the mountains of middle Germany; and so likewise the old glaciers of the western Alps were on a much more extensive scale than those towards the east end of the chain. Similar contrasts may be noted at the present day. Thus we find glaciers in Norway under lat. 60°, while in the Ural Mountains in the same latitude there is none. The glaciers of the western Alps, again, are larger than those in the eastern part of the chain. The Caucasus region, it is true, has considerable glaciers, but then the mountains are higher.