But let the configuration of the surface be still farther varied, and let some large district within or near the tropics, such as Brazil, with its plains and hills of moderate height, be converted into sea, while lands of equal elevation and extent rise up in the arctic circle. From this change there would, in the first place, result a sensible diminution of temperature near the tropic, for the Brazilian soil would no longer be heated by the sun; so that the atmosphere would be less warm, as also the neighboring Atlantic. On the other hand, the whole of Europe, Northern Asia, and North America, would be chilled by the enormous quantity of ice and snow, thus generated on the new arctic continent. If, as we have already seen, there are now some points in the southern hemisphere where snow is perpetual down to the level of the sea, in latitudes as low as central England, such might assuredly be the case throughout a great part of Europe, under the change of circumstances above supposed: and if at present the extreme range of drifted icebergs is the Azores, they might easily reach the equator after the assumed alteration. But to pursue the subject still farther, let the Himalaya mountains, with the whole of Hindostan, sink down, and their place be occupied by the Indian Ocean, while an equal extent of territory and mountains, of the same vast height, rise up between North Greenland and the Orkney Islands. It seems difficult to exaggerate the amount to which the climate of the northern hemisphere would then be cooled.[186]