Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/248

 fissured crust of the globe may have favoured, perhaps for centuries, the growth of palms and tree-ferns and the existence of animals requiring a high temperature, over entire countries where now a very different climate prevails. According to this view of things (a view already indicated by me in a work entitled "Geological Essay on the Superposition of Rocks in both Hemispheres") the temperature of volcanos would be that of the interior of the earth, and the same cause which, operating through volcanic eruptions, now produces devastating effects, might in primeval ages have clothed the deeply fissured rocks of the newly oxydised earth in every zone with the most luxuriant vegetation.

If, with a view to explain the distribution of tropical forms whose remains are now discovered buried in northern regions, it should be assumed that the long-haired species of Elephant now found enclosed in ice was originally indigenous in cold climates, and that forms resembling the same leading type may, as in the case of lions and lynxes, have been able to live in wholly different climates, still this manner of solving the difficulty presented by fossil remains cannot be extended so as to apply to vegetable productions. From reasons with which the study of vegetable physiology makes us acquainted, Palms, Musaceæ, and arborescent Monocotyledones, are incapable of supporting the deprivation of their appendicular organs which would be caused by the present temperature of our northern regions; and in the geological problem which we have to examine, it appears to