Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/93

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It is believed by some authorities that during the long ages of the Meiocene period there was a glacial climate in Europe, "as severe as, if not more excessive than, the intensest severity of climate experienced during the last glacial epoch;" or, in other words, that there was as great a lowering of the temperature as that by which great tracts of land were covered with ice and snow in the Pleistocene age. This conclusion is founded upon the discovery of angular blocks of stone in the upper Meiocene strata of the Superga Hill, near Turin, which have been conveyed some twenty miles away from the Alpine localities in which similar rocks are seen in situ. They are angular and indistinguishable from the erratic blocks of the district, and are believed by Sir Charles Lyell and Professor Gastaldi to have been transported to their present positions by ice. It seems to me that these blocks do not prove a severe climate in any place except where the ice in question has been produced, which may have been on the tops of lofty mountains, like those of the Andes, which send glaciers down to the sea in Eyre Sound, Patagonia, in the latitude of Paris. They tell us no more of the Meiocene climate of Europe than the glaciers at present in New Zealand tell us of a climate which is sufficiently mild to allow of the growth of tree ferns and areka palms. It is impossible that a great climatal change could have taken place in the Meiocene age affecting Europe generally, without leaving its mark in the flora and in the fauna.