We shall see hereafter that man, possibly civilized man, dwelt in this fair and glorious world--this world that knew no frost, no cold, no ice, no snow; that he had dwelt in it for thousands of years; that he witnessed the appalling and sudden calamity which fell upon it; and that he has preserved the memory of this catastrophe to the present day, in a multitude of myths and legends scattered all over the face of the habitable earth. But was it sudden? Was it a catastrophe? Again I call the witnesses to the stand, for I ask you, good reader, to accept nothing that is not _proved_. In the first place, was it sudden? [1. "Earth and Man," p. 264. 2. "The Last of the Arctic Voyages," vol. i, p. 380.] {p. 46} One writer says: "The glacial action, in the opinion of the land-glacialists, was limited to a _definite period_, and operated _simultaneously_ over a vast area."[1] And again: "The drift was accumulated where it is by some violent action."[2] Louis Figuier says: "The two cataclysms of which we have spoken surprised Europe at the moment of the development of an important creation. The whole scope of animated nature, the evolution of animals, was _suddenly arrested_ in that part of our hemisphere over which these gigantic convulsions spread, followed by the brief but sudden submersion of entire continents. Organic life had scarcely recovered from the violent shock, when a second, and perhaps severer blow assailed it. The northern and central parts of Europe, the vast countries which extend from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean and the Danube, were visited by a period of sudden and severe cold; the temperature of the polar regions seized them. The plains of Europe, but now ornamented by the luxurious vegetation developed by the heat of a burning climate, the boundless pastures on which herds of great elephants, the active horse, the robust hippopotamus, and great carnivorous animals grazed and roamed, became covered with a mantle of ice and snow."[3] M. Ch. Martins says: "The most violent convulsions of the solid and liquid elements appear to have been themselves only the effects due to a cause much more powerful than the mere expansion of the pyrosphere; and it is necessary to recur, in order to explain them, to some new and bolder hypothesis than has Yet been hazarded. Some philosophers have belief [1. American Cyclopædia," vol. vi, p. 114. 2. Ibid., vol. vi, p. 111. 3. "The World before the Deluge," p. 435.] {p. 47} in an astronomical revolution which may have overtaken our globe in the first age of its formation, and have modified its position in relation to the sun. They admit _that the poles have not always been as they are now_, and that _some terrible shock displaced them_, changing at the same time the inclination of the axis of the rotation of the earth."[1] Louis Figuier says: