In New Zealand the marks of the Glacial period are unequivocal The glaciers which now come down from the lofty mountains upon the South Island of New Zealand to within a few hundred feet of the sea then descended to the sea-level. The longest existing glacier in New Zealand is sixteen miles, but formerly one of them had a length of seventy-eight miles. One of the ancient moraines contains a boulder from thirty to forty feet in diameter, and the amount of glacial _débris_ covering the mountain-sides is said to be enormous. Reports have also been recently brought of signs of ancient glaciers in Australia. [Illustration: Fig. 38.--Generalised view of the whole glaciated region of North America. The area of motionless ground-ice is shown by the white lines in northern part of Alaska.] According to Darwin, there are distinct signs of glaciation upon the plains of Patagonia sixty or seventy miles east of the foot of the mountains, and in the Straits of Magellan he found great masses of unstratified glacial material containing boulders which were at least one hundred and thirty miles away from their parent rock; while upon the island of Chiloe he found embedded in "hardened mud" boulders which must have come from the mountain-chains of the continent. Agassiz also observed unquestionable glacial phenomena on various parts of the Fuegian coast, and indeed everywhere on the continent south of latitude 37°. Between Concepcion and Arauco, in latitude 37°, Agassiz observed, near the sea-level, a glacial surface well marked with furrows and scratches, and as well preserved, he says, "as any he had seen under the glaciers of the present day." [Illustration: Fig. 39.--Quartzite boulder of 45 cubic metres, on Mont Lachat, 800 metres above the valley of the Belley, in Ain, France (Falsan).] CHAPTER VI. ANCIENT GLACIERS IN THE EASTERN HEMISPHERE. About two million square miles of northern Europe were covered with perennial ice during the Glacial period. From the scratches upon the rocks, and from the direction in which material has been transported, it is evident that the main centre of radiation is to be found in the mountains of Scandinavia, and that the glaciers still existing in Norway are the lineal descendants of those of the great Ice age.