Ragnarok : the Age of Fire and GravelDonnelly, Ignatius
Science
Ragnarok : the Age of Fire and Gravel
Donnelly, Ignatius
Atlantis (Legendary place); Comets; Drift
Again, no traces of northern drift are found in California, which is
surrounded by high mountains, in some of which fragments of glaciers
are found even to this day.[3]
According to Foster, the Drift did not extend to Oregon; and, in the
opinion of some, it does not reach much beyond the western boundary
of Iowa.
Nor can it be supposed that the driftless regions of Siberia,
Northwestern America, and the Pacific coast are due to the absence of
ice upon them during the Glacial
[1. "Report of the Geological Survey of Wisconsin," vol. i, p. 114.
2. "The Great Ice Age," p. 465.
3. Whitney, "Proceedings of the California Academy of Natural
Sciences."]
{p. 32}
age, for in Siberia the remains of the great mammalia, the mammoth,
the woolly rhinoceros, the bison, and the horse, are found to this
day imbedded in great masses of ice, which, as we shall see, are
supposed to have been formed around them at the very coming of the
Drift age.
But there is another difficulty:
Let us suppose that on all the continents an ice-belt came down from
the north and south poles to 35° or 40° of latitude, and there stood,
massive and terrible, like the ice-sheet of Greenland, frowning over
the remnant of the world, and giving out continually fogs,
snow-storms, and tempests; what, under such circumstances, must have
been the climatic conditions of the narrow belt of land which these
ice-sheets did not cover?
Louis Figuier says:
"Such masses of ice could only have covered the earth when the
temperature of the air was lowered at least some degrees below zero.
But organic life is incompatible with such a temperature; and to this
cause must we attribute the disappearance of certain species of
animals and plants--in particular the rhinoceros and the
elephant--which, before this sudden and extraordinary cooling of the
globe, appeared to have limited themselves, in immense herds, to
Northern Europe, and chiefly to Siberia, where their remains have
been found in such prodigious quantities."[1]
But if the now temperate region of Europe and America was subject to
a degree of cold great enough to destroy these huge animals, then
there could not have been a tropical climate anywhere on the globe.
If the line of 35° or 40°, north and south, was several degrees below
zero, the equator must have been at least below the frost-point. And,
if so, how can we account for the survival,
[1. "The World before the Deluge," p. 462.]
{p. 33}
to our own time, of innumerable tropical plants that can not stand
for one instant the breath of frost, and whose fossilized remains are
found in the rocks prior to the Drift? As they lived through the
Glacial age, it could not have been a period of great and intense
cold. And this conclusion is in accordance with the results of the
latest researches of the scientists:--
"In his valuable studies upon the diluvial flora, Count Gaston de
Saporta concludes that the climate in this period was marked rather
by extreme moisture than extreme cold."
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