_Stratigraphical Evidence of Long-Continued Mild Arctic Conditions._--Let us now turn to the stratigraphical evidence, which, as we have already shown, offers a crucial test of the occurrence or non-occurrence of glaciation during any extensive geological period; and here we have the testimony of perhaps the greatest living authority on Arctic geology--Professor Nordenskjoeld. In his lecture on "The Former Climate of the Polar Regions," he says: "The character of the coasts in the Arctic regions is especially favourable to geological investigations. While the valleys are for the {77} most part filled with ice, the sides of the mountains in summer, even in the 80th degree of latitude, and to a height of 1,000 or 1,500 feet above the level of the sea, are almost wholly free from snow. Nor are the 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