O^C^/^^^^WV^ rtiM' jDflioi|{Ju[Ilonpufi. ' r .;^/<' (?^/fi I K- "^-X/^L.^^ ^ rd^ ^■>^ '^^^siti irt:- / r: ri ^r. •i^ / ^ TRANSACTIONS. ^AkLuKmi). \?>1 . ^ lui-iuff a belts stretching, now m uuc mo^x...^ -which may hereafter be understood. Ja^ cCf / ^-^^^ p/i^ a(/i<_ I of the 3d cause preseut guess," le fauna, lui'iug a i"atioii of tly. He ividcnces i in New that is ' covered -nd as so L- 1-egions, h hemis- ^ Zealand designata )ortions of from local belts stretclnng, now m uu. ... f "^ ^'°'^^ "" ' — fie tropics, which may hereafter be understood. S- /5 u r4^A A/li/ ^l-J /Tif^^*^^^;^^ TRANSACTIONS OP THE NEW ZEALAND INSTITUTE, 18 7 7. I.— MISCELLANEOUS. Art, I. — yew Zealand a Pust-ijlacial Centre of Creation. By T. H. CocKBURN-HooD, F.G.S. [Bead before the Wellington PhiHsojjhical Society, 2th December, 187G.] Capt.un Hutton, in a x^aper wliicli appears iu tlie last volume of the " Transactions of tlie N.Z. Institute," has shown that the presumed cause of the shrinking of the glaciers of the New Zealand Alps to their present from their ancient colossal dimensions, is more than "a shrewd guess," and that the examination of its former and existing littoral marine fauna, goes far to prove that it was due — not to a change of climate during a period of Southern Polar Glaciation — hut to the diminished elevation of that Cordillera, combmed with other influences, of which presently. He concludes his remarks with the following observation, "the evidences seem to be in favour of there never having been a Glacial Epoch in New Zealand, and consequently none in the Southern Hemisphere :" that is to say, that there never was a period when a general ice-cap covered these islands as it does the greater part of Greenland to-day, and as so many deem it an established fact that, pressing down from polar regions, a well nigh universal one overwhelmed the whole of nearly both hemis- pheres in post-pliocene times^against part of which theory New Zealand may be deemed to present very strong evidence. The term "glacial" is a most convenient one by which to designata those periods of intense cold to which, m then* turn, various portions of existing lands are now, and have in all time past been subjected from local causes which admit of explanation, as well as from others affecting broad belts stretching, now in one meridian, now in another, towards the tropics, which may hereafter be understood. 4 Traiisartioiis, — Misci'llaiimi.i. It is therefore to be regretted that it has come to be so commonly appUed to this one particular era of assumed chauge in the temperature of tlic whole globe, that several ■writers use the terms Pre-glacial and Pliocene as synonymous, even when the consideration of theu- readers is being du'ected by them to New Zealand. This supposed frigid epoch in the earth's history may well, however, be taken as a fresh starting point by those naturalists who agree with Professor Haeckel, in his proposition that during the " Glacial Epoch between these vast lifeless ice continents there remained onhj a narrow zone to which the life of the organic ivorld had to withdraw.''^- "Where this oasis was exactly situated, "the seed of our coming, the seed of food, the seed of man," as the Polynesians describe then- Hawaiiki, is not suggested, but it may not unfairly be presumed to have been in that portion of the globe where survivors of its most ancient denizens remain, the certainly imglaciated regions of Australasia. The southern ranges of Australia proper may come to have their local glacial period by-and-bye. Ah-eady heavy snows and avalanches do then- work there, and fragments of rock have been carried down now a^d again from their summits, and deposited as blocs perches on the sides of the sub- alpine valleys ; but no traces of ancient ice action are to be seen. During comparatively recent times on the contrary, there arc many evidences that a more equably warm climate prevailed ; in the extra tropical portion of the gi-eat island continent the extremes became more severe, as the extensive remnants of the inland sea gradually di-ied up. "We find the remains of crocodiles in the river alluviums, 800 miles south of the present range of these animals, in juxta-position with those of the great extinct marsupials ; the tropical marine fauna of its northern coasts had also a wider range, and lingered long in the gulfs of the South Australian sea ; the set of the ciu-rents was probably from north to south, and species uaiknown on the eastern coast flourished in these mediterranean waters. It is an old conservative country this Australia — not given to abrupt changes — but now, like other lands in the southern hemisphere, is gradually rising, especially its central regions. In the Great Australian Bight the upheaval is estimated at as much as twelve feet in places since 1825. Earthquakes are frequent, as in other lands undergoing a similar process, but their effects are little felt on the eastern coast, although evidences of elevation in modern times are found from Cape Howe all along the shores far to the north. The shocks usually are not smart enough to produce visible consequences ; not even to shake the trees on the slopes of * Hist, of Creation, Yol. I., p. 315. CocKBUi{N-*HooD. — Xcuv Zfcdaiul a Po^i-[ilacial Centre of Creation. 5 the moimtain gorges sufficiently to cause them to di'op their winter-gained loads; " Piscium et summo genus hfBsit ulmo," may in the glens under Mount Kosciusko be translated, the oxen remained in the lofty gum-trees. Very frequently when the accumulations of snow after severe winters disappear under the summer sun, cattle are found fixed in the branches of the tall trees in the narrow, deep ravines, filled up with drifted snows, in which they sank — which may readily be imagined, seeing that these drifts are sometimes 300 yards deep — in the upper gorges of the Indi river, as stated in the account given by my venerable friend the Eev. W. B. Clarke, F.E.S., who, with so much care and arduous labour, explored these wild and difficult regions. There are no evidences whatever, nevertheless, of then- having gone through a colder period than the present. The view may be taken that this, one of the oldest of existing lands— part of it is as ancient as old New Zealand, of which but little remains — was an inde- pendent "centre of creation" in which the progress of development has not in its prevailing forms of hfe advanced beyond that point reached elsewhere in early geological eras. In this island continent " we find ourselves at home " with our earUest ancestors, "the beaked animals," the Ornithorhynchus and the Echidna; here are to be seen, hopping about, our somewhat nearer ones the rat-like marsupials, similar to those of the early tertiary epoch, our certain progenitors of the seventeenth stage or genera- tion. We have always known that man was made of the dust of the earth, but through what forms that dust had previously passed, we had not been precisely informed until now. It may be satisfactory to many to have their proved pedigree put before them by Professor Haeckel, at all events many noble families will feel assured that it is at least as correct and authentic as that of their modern ancestors placed before then- feUows m the pages of some genealogical dictionaries. As well as on the land, individuals of very antique aspect yet linger also near its shores and in its rivers : the Trujonia and Ceatraciun of meso- zoic days, and that strange creature of most ancient lineage the Devonian- looking Ccratodus. It may be urged that these are but examples of the persistent recurrence of pecuhar forms under the obligation of the law which governs the process of evolution ; or it may be held that they present instances of the tendency to revert under the potency of the same law, cucumstances being suitable, to original types even after the lapse of untold ages. Six-legged cats, dogs and other creatures with such abnormal characteristics, are alleged even by some to be merely extreme cases of atavism — i.e., to show clearly the derivation of the mammalia from, or at least their common genetic origin with the Myriapoda, and their alliance to the ivy and other clasping plants. 6 Transactiotifi. — Miscellaneous. Under certain circumstances, as Sir Charles Lyell says, the great Enahosaurians might re-appcar in the ocean depths and then* diagon-hke congeners invade the lands, and soar above the forests, for from -svhence they came, from whom descended, there are no records to tell. They appeared on earth when cosmical conditions were suitable, and disappeared iitterly, it is presumed, when these were changed, leaving no transitional links behind that we know of. In the present century thousands are ready to accept any new idea, however preposterous, propounded by the class who come under the denomination of "advanced thinkers," who so often evince utter contempt for the axiom of Mr. Huxley himself, that " the first duty of a hjiJothesis is to be intelligible." It seems strange, nevertheless, that so startling a one as this Narrow Zone, walled round with solid ice, the withdi-awal for thousands of years of solar heat from the greater portion of the globe, when the vivifying rays had ceased to warm the seas, and ocean circulation came to a stand — for this mint bo the inference — should be accepted with more readiness than the idea of the Noachian Deluge ; when, according to Cuvier, there remained only " Xarroiv regions, from which man re-peopled the earth after those stupendous events ivhich closed the Elephantine period." Those events which took place when the long, slowly sinking Equatorial Continent — the Lhanka of the Brahmins, the Lemuria of modern savans, a map of which is placed before us by Professor Haeckel, where he says man was developed from perfected apes, a hundred thousand years ago, in Pliocene times, perhaps hundreds of thousands in Miocene, was at last suddenly submerged, during a period of intense volcanic activity, when its founda- tions were taken away, and other regions were upheaved in its place. This cataclysmal catastrophe in consonance with Mosaic history, in consonance with the traditions of men of aU races, Caucasian, Mongolian, Polynesian, or Negroid, presents none of the extraordinary difficulties which surround the Glacial Hypothesis as thus put before us. It was a catastrophe affecting a limited area, enormous as compared with that which subsided during the earthquakes of 1819. — The Piunn of Cutch, from similar causes acting upon an infinitely smaller scale than they once did in the adjacent regions — but small when contrasted with that over which we are told life was extinguished by a universal ice-cap. The general order of things when the portion of the world known to the advanced families of men, possibly to all the human race, was overwhelmed by the sea, still went on undisturbed, it may be presumed, elsewhere. The giant sloths and armadillos may have moved about on the savannahs of South America, and the great marsupials — the gigantic wombats, kangaroos. CocKBURN-HooD. — .Y#(r Zealand a Post-ijlacial Centre of Creation. 7 aud dasyures over those of Australia ; the moas and other wingless bii-ds flourished in the then more extensive laud of New Zealand, and the levels under the Rocky Mountauis afforded sustenance to herds of mighty animals still, as well as the South African table-lands. It seems a remarkable fact in the history of organic hfe, that whilst so many of the contemporary animals have succumbed under various in- fluences during the lapse of time, these great birds of New Zealand should have continued to exist from far earlier ages still until very recent years (if indeed there are not individuals yet remaining), and is probably due to the persistence of an equable climate prevailing over a land in which they had no competitors. The struggle for life must, as the author of the "History of Creation"' admits, have been severe indeed — "fearful," as he remarks — for all forms of tropical fauna and flora especially ; hemmed in on a narrow zone between two icy walls stretching nearly from pole to pole, the climate for them must have been rigorous in the extreme. There was in this crowded place of refuge, to which he observes all those wise creatures withdi-ew "who wished to escape being frozen," an excellent opportunity afforded for the extinction of many nearly effete tribes, and the survival of the fittest; it certainly appears to have been an inconvenient time for man to have begun to push his way — 100,000 years ago, Herr HaeckeVs date for pliocene men, being the great ice age accordmg to Sir Charles Lyell. Unless develop- ment has proceeded since with more rapid strides than this writer assumes with his master it did during previous geological eras, primaeval men must have witnessed strange scenes. The migration of the survivors, leaving in many cases no representa- tives behind them, is a difficult problem to solve, — the wingless birds to their special island habitats; the rodents of South America to theirs, leaving the monotremes and marsupials in sole possession of their ancestral domains. Without incurring the risk of being deemed deserving of the contemp- tuous indignation poured upon those " old stagers grown grey in opposite views" who, with "ridiculous arrogance," object under these difficult circumstances to receive the whole theory of descent as enunciated, and the correct pedigrees as offered by so eminent an authority and adventurous a thinker as the author of this history, we may be permitted to ask for some explanation of the formidable objections that stand in the way of our believing in this narrow zone amidst universal ice. The generality of persons who may read his work will scarcely be satisfied by his assurance that "proofs demanded arc needless." 8 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. One of the first difficulties that suggests itself in the consideration of this particular dogma, this narrow zone to ■which organic life had to withdraw in post-pliocene times — is that during this epoch, which it appears was subsequent to, if not coincident with, the time when men first commenced to talk sense in Lomuria — i.e., 100,000 j-ears ago — although the circulation of the equatorial currents must have ceased, the chilled waters from both polar regions continued their course with in- creased force, until they had invaded all submarine depths, and all forms of organic life unable to adapt themselves to the change, or unable to reach the place of refuge, perished. It would be difficult, however, to prove that polar marine currents have ever operated over greater areas or with more force than they do to-day, and frost now stretches its rigid winding sheet over tracts of land not long since, geologically speaking, teeming with animal life and covered with luxuriant vegetation, whilst in the same latitudes it has relaxed its grasp over others which for ages had been locked in its stern embrace. Ever varying in then- direction during the lapse of years, mighty ocean streams have borne along then- islands of ice loaded with the debris of rocks from glaciated regions, strewing the ocean floor as liberally now as in any previous era, dropping boulders to-day uj)on beds being laid down at the bottom of the sea, to be the chalk hills of future continents, and at still greater abysmal depths of red clay (both composed of exuviae of minute organisms, falling to the bottom mcessantly through countless centuries ; a discovery the more astonishing when it is considered that this lifeless red clay, identically the same as that of the dry land so famiUar to us, and so long a profound mystery, is seemingly chiefly derived from the insoluble residue of these Forauiini/era, which is estimated at about only two per cent.) changmg the climates of adjacent lands, and causing ever varying migrations of their fauna and flora, as well as of the life beneath the waters, in all time past. The glaciers in present elevated regions, the Cordilleras of South America and New Zealand, the Himalayas, the Alps, the Caucasus, may not be greater than those which descended from the lofty mountains, higher perhaps than any of these that rose above the plains covered with the forests of the carboniferous era. Under the plu\^al conditions which then probably obtained, judguig from the climates in which analogous vegetation flourishes at the present time, we may conclude they are not. At all events the marks of ice-action are to be seen, proving that in those days, as well as in oiu- o^\'n, certain portions of the earth's sui-face had their share of glaciation, however much tlie general aspect of the fauna and flora may suggest that the temperature CocKBURN-HooD. — Xeic ZcaUxitd a Pust-ylacial Centre of Creation. 9 of the globe was at that epoch more equable, if uot universally higher, which may reasonably be presumed to have been the case ; more especially if, as it has been suggested, climatic zones did not exist until the com- mencement of the tertiary era. The further careful observations are extended and ice-marks sought for, where they ought to be found in the same latitudes, if the ice-cap covered one hemisphere in all meridians at the same time, the less strong appears the evidence of the struggle for life, it is alleged that animals and plants underwent in the limited unglaciated regions proposed to have remained during one portion of the quaternary period ; a struggle which proved too great for many pre-existmg forms, and led to theii* extinction, as some of the advocates of recurring eras of universal glaciatiou assert most probably effected the destruction of the giant Saurians, once the domineermg tenants of land and sea in all parts of the world ; whether that tenancy was alto- gether synchronous in both hemispheres is an interesting questionjif its expiry was due to an age of ice , it may Avell be doubted whether it was. So far as observations have been made in the southern hemisphere, there are no records of a greater amount of frost than inscribes its marks to-day. South Georgia, in latitude 54° S., is frequently referred to as an evidence of what local influences may bring about in the way of glaciation ; exposed to the full force of the berg-laden antarctic current it is wrapped in snow and ice nearly to the water's edge all the year, whilst fifteen degrees to the west forests of beech and fuchsia clothe the sides of the mountains, and humming-bu'ds flit over the glaciers in the Straits of Magellan. The condition of this island and of SandA\-ich Island is "a warning," Sir Charles Lyell says, against concluding that glaciation must have been universal over one hemisphere at the same time. The opinion expressed by Professor Agassiz and others respecting the apparent work of ice in the Amazon Valley may nevertheless be correct. A berg-bearing current may have SAvept over the submerged eastern plains of South America, and the temperature lowered over a broad belt in that meridian ; whilst Australia, New Zealand, and South Afi-ica were subjected to no such influence. The work that is being done by southern currents now must equal in magnitude that performed by the ocean streams which deposited the northern drift, now in one now in another meridian, over the submerged lands of Europe and America, Flowing up to the north, they carry then' chilled waters under tropical seas whose surface temperature is 80° to 85°, not only up to the equator, but on, it has been most unexpectedly discovered, into the temperate zone as far as the Bay of Biscay — working, of course, great changes in the submarine inhabitants of vast areas — as similar currents have been doing in all time past, as the great underset flowed 10 Traiisactiniix. — Misccllcoiroiix. alternately to or frora the north, introducing antarctic fauna into the northern hemisphere dm-ing one cycle, and arctic at another into the southern temperate zone. Their respective remains, intermingled at first in the upper strata with those of tropical and suh-tropical forms, are now being deposited layer upon layer over the beds which contain such different ones below, and which will again in many places come to entomb the shells and the bones of races similar in type to those which previously there found a grave, when such a change in temperature as has occurred in most regions over and over again takes place. The most enthusiastic glacialist could ask for no mightier engine than the great antarctic stream bearing its vast islands of ice sixty miles and more in length far towards the tropics in certain meridians. "What local influences are doing now in northern regions, students have more ample opportunity of observing. Notably the condition of great part of Greenland, where, in latitude 70°, ice islands of enormous dimensions float off from a sea-chff of solid glacier ice 3,000 feet in height. The state of things obtaining in that great land may be contrasted with that in the equally misnamed country, Iceland, even that of its lower portions in 65° N. with that of Lapland in 72°. The climate of the Crimea affords a use- ful example when compared with that of Venice or Bordeaux. In conse- quence of the radiation from the Thibetan steppes, we find cereals ripening on the Siberian side of the Himalaya at a height above the sea equal to that of the summit of Mont Blanc, whilst several thousand feet lower down arctic cold prevails, and mighty glaciers do then- work above the burning j)lains of Hindostau, growing under the soft breath of the rain-bearing southerly winds. Again intense cold prevails over countries on the shores of that great inlet of the North Pacific which, in not very remote times, teemed with animal life of southern types. In that region where the Amoor river after flowing amidst uml)rageous groves and vine-clad hiUs turns north and enters a frozen sea, a local glacial period has possibly commenced, advancing with slow but unwaver- ing steps, which might easily be accelerated by the subsidence of the shallow sea-bottom which interrupts the flow of polar waters ; whilst in other places owing to a deviation in the direction of local currents of warm and chilled waters in seas of no great depth, sub-tropical forms are again multiplying where but recently arctic ones usurped possession. The iron grasp of frost has loosened its hold over great part of "Western America, and a temperate climate for ages has been gaining sway over the arid regions where rivers flow in deep chasms or canons worn by them through the plains under the Rocky Mountains. CocKBURN-HooD. — Xew Zealand a Pust-r/lacial Centre of Creation. 11 There lias been no ice work going on there since the Colorado began to cut its mighty drain a mile and a quarter deep, where it is at the same time but one hundred and eighty feet across ; the three hundred feet of the lowest portion of this extraordinary chasm being eroded through hard granite. Wlien this great work commenced, according to reasonable calculations, the northern currents must have been spreading drift on the submerged eastern plains, if that operation went on during the glacial period of Su- Charles Lyell. The moraines of ancient local glaciers may be seen on the sloj)es of these mountains below 39° N. latitude, and also upon those of the Sierra Nevada, still nearer to the tropics, but traces of general glaciation there or of northern drift on the shores of California of the same age as that on the eastern side of the Missouri have not hitherto been observed. The vast accumulations of shingle on the terraces of Oregon and Washington terri- tory are as ancient, according to American geologists, as those of the highest plateau of the prairies east of the Eocky Mountains, and are composed, as the latter are likewise, of materials of local derivation. They were deposited there when the Cascade Eange abeady presented a formid- able wall, and previous to the time when Mount Hood, Mount Eainier, and Shasta, those grand "Lookers-on"' of the Pacific Coast, were piled up. The boulders which lie on these old shingle terraces on the sides of the Willamette and other valleys, and on the shores of Vancouver, may be pointed to as memorials of the " Great Age of Ice," but they cannot be proved to have travelled very far. The grey syenite of which the majority of them consist, is a distinguishing rock of the Cascade Eange, from whence glaciers brought them down probably during a local period of cold. On the Atlantic side of the Mississippi basin, erratics were dropped in certain meridians, as far south as the 37th degree of lati- tude, when the way was open over the great lake region then submerged to the polar sea, just as they are being now on the American side of the Atlantic, nearer to the tropic than they were at that era. Ice-polished and striated boulders, floated from afar in distant ages, may lie buried under the soil of the Californian plains, but none have been discovered by American observers. I could see no foreign stones or ancient ice-marks on the slopes of Calaveras or Mariposa, above Yosemite. There is a vast river in the Pacific coming from equatorial regions, entitled to be described in the same expressive language with which Maury introduces his readers to the consideration of the Gulf Stream. It sweeps near the coast of Japan past Yokohama, leaving the shores of Yesso further off than it does those of Nipon, and has flowed in the same course, temper- ing its chmate and causing hurricanes in its seas, we may conclude from 12 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. remotest times, for there are no sigus of glaciation iu Japan proper. Although Fusi-Yama (which, according to Japanese tradition, grew in a few days imder the eyes of men, as lorullo did), reared its imposing cone on the sea-board plain, that recently elevated region is but a narrow strip along the shore, and ice-marks ought to be seen on the flanks of its main chain of ancient hills, if the glacial epoch prevailed over the whole of the northern hemisphere simultaneously. But an inteUigent traveller who has lately ridden over the interior of the island from north to south informed me that there were none visible on their eastern side ; and the talented author of " Frost and Fire " — ]\Ii-. Campbell — has sought there also in vain for any testimony of the rocks to the continued reign of the first, whose signs are so familiar to him. A deflection of the Pacific or Japan stream which flows on past the Kurile Islands, cm-ving round by the Aleutian chain to the coasts of Oregon, causing a rainfall there nearly equal to that of Darjeeling in the Himalayas, would bring ice over the terraced gardens on the slopes of the " Matchless Mountain," and over the whole of Yesso ; opposite the northern shores of which for many miles off the land, the sea is frozen every winter, in the latitude of Naples, in consequence of then- being swept by that current which, escaping through narrow portals, flows roimd into the Yellow Sea, chilling the coasts of China. The British colony of Vancouver and Washington Territory, instead of being enveloped in fogs, would be reduced to the condition in which Britain itself was when no Gulf Stream came near its shores, and to which Greenland has been brought in recent times. There not very long ago the oak grew, and animals throve where ice- streams now flow, and there was a time stUl more remote when the magnolia blossomed and the vine clung to giant sequoias in its forests ; and there may be another not so very far distant when the magnetic current (which may be the cause that produces this intense cold) may vary its du-ection and go further east again, and the eastern branch of the Gulf Stream may flow inside of Iceland ; there Norway and Scandinavia will agam have their age of ice, whilst the " lost laud" may once more merit its now inappropriate name and be covered with green woods. It may be when the present Arctic Expedition returns, evidences will be produced of semi-tropical vege- tation having flourished in still higher latitudes again at later geological eras than when the carboniferous vegetation prepared the material for the coal of high northern regions. Such a discovery as that the Pole itself is now situated iu the centre of a land, in former ages covered with umbrageous forests, would clash violently with existing theories. '•' '■^^ Every process of evolution may, of course, be more readily conceived to be possible by assigning imlimited time for its performance. But if the CocKBURN-HooD. — Xeir Zealand a Poxt-ijlacial (.'fittre nf Creation. 13 elaboration of new species, by the "aimless action of Natural Selection," necessitates the granting of tlikty times the number of millions of years physical considerations render it possible to allow, as Dr. Tait states the question, the difficulty of the position will not be lessened by Herr Haeckel's bold assertion, that " we have not a single rational ground for conceiving the time requisite to be limited in any way." This writer, although he deems very slow progress to have been the rule, leaves his readers to believe in the possibility of exceptions to it. Notwithstanding the small advances made during the recent period in any line of life (how the cats, the dogs, and the pigeons of the days of the earliest Pharoahs remain represented but by pure cats and dogs and pigeons still, not one attempt at j)assing beyond the limit of its class having been made by any of these creatures, whose development has received such attention and studied assistance from man), they are not to be daunted by the proposition that in new centres of creation, such as New Zealand, the derivative process was by some means marvellously hastened in its accomplishment. Recurring periods of heat and cold extending simultaneously over the greater pai't of the world, may be convenient agents to call into requisition for the purpose of explaining the disappearance of many forms of organic life. The vanishing of others for a time, and their return to the same localities, displacing very different ones that in the interim had flourished there, is, no doubt, due to such cause. But had these cycles been repeated more frequently than even according to the views of Mr. Croll they have been — views much more within our grasp than the consideration of pro- cesses requiring ceons paralyzing to- the minds of most men who attempt to dwell upon them — they would not account for many of the events which we know have taken place in the history of animal life. Ten thousand or twenty thousand years may be deemed by evolutionists generally, periods altogether too short for the accomplishment of any of the processes of divergence and development necessary to the establishment of species, for which millions have been asked ; but much could be done during such a vast lapse of years in the way of perfecting various families and the extinction of others. The recurring joeriods of the reign of frost over particular areas in alternate hemispheres, which have evidently taken place, would cause no violent changes, advancing as they must have done with slow enough steps to afford ample opportunity for the migration of existing forms of life to suitable situations, so long as any such remained for them to migrate to, which during this Glacial Epoch of Professor Haeckel were certainly reduced to a minimum. There was no ice-sheet enveloping their ancient haunts, which destroyed 14 'ririn^acliniix. — ^[isci'llaitcaKs, the DiprotoiTou, the Zygomaturus, and Nototherium, iu the marshy savan- nahs of AustraUa, bixt as these became di-ainecl in the course of the gi-aclual elevation of the land and converted into arid plains, swept by sirocco-hke winds, the succulent vegetation upon which they lived failed, we may presume, and remaining represented by related animals of comparatively pigmy size, they disappeared utterly as the Megatherium, the Megalonj'x, and Mylodon of South America, which likewise leaving small analogues behind, passed from the face of the earth under the influence of some such cause, or destroyed by the irresistible attacks of internal parasites, (as we see hosts of domestic animals now throughout extensive districts of Australia, unable to resist the enemies which had proved less dangerous to the indigenous marsupials, from whom they were derived), or of swarms of pestiferous insects, such as the tsetse fly of Africa, or the calf- and foal- murdering one of Patagonia." It will not be proposed that any change of temperature destroyed the aboriginal horse of North and South America. Herds of these animals roamed in comparatively recent times from the cold north to the Patagonian plains, and their contemporaries flourish there still. Whatever was the cause of their extinction, it had ceased to act when the Spaniards conquered Mexico, for the new equine race introduced by them has multiplied rapidly, and continues to flourish equally well in a feral as in a domestic state. When the plague or the cholera take their tens of thousands of men, the lower animals remain generally unscathed, and vice-vcrsu. The parasitical worms which are so fatal to the flocks of the Australian sheep-farmer abound in the kangaroo and wallabi, and the former, if left to themselves, wox;ld ere long become extinct, destroyed in some districts by the parasites, in others starved out by the increasing hordes of hardy marsupials. The increase of this inferior order of animals as it stands iu the derivative pedigi'ee has been immense since the balance was destroyed by the extinction of the dingo, and since the aboriginal men have so much decreased in numbers. Thirty thousand kangaroos of large and smaller tribes have lately been killed on a single settler's run without making any observable diminution in then- strength, and until some epidemic arises amongst them, their singularly rapid increase will tax the efforts of the white man to check iu these thinly peopled regions. If these marsupials are so inferior a grade of animals, they are at all events admirably adapted for the situation they now occupy ; so peculiarly well adapted to it that after * An interesting circumstance of this kind is now being observed over large districts in the interior of New South Wales, which, if it continued, would lead in time to the disappearance of white cattle and white-legged or piebald horses in the herds, sucli being attacked by a disease caused by a black ,473 /(if covering the pastures, producing fatal effects upon all young animals, and even many grown ones, whilst those whose coats are of dark colours do not sutfer at all. CocKBURN-HooD. — Xi'ir Zralainl a Pnsl-i/larial Cfiitn' of ('rratinn. 1.' the enormous length of time they have occupied it, not the slightest attempt of divergence is manifested, and apparently as during the untold ages of the secondary era, they are destmed to remain in statu quo, so long as the present circumstances obtain. It seems as unsafe to hazard any theory upon their inferiority and adaptability to vary as upon beauty being due to sexual selection, seeing that the • most perfect beauty is possessed by certain organic forms which have no organs of perception at all. The disastrous effects of the ravages of insects in the vegetable world are familiar, and the power of the canker-worm and the palmer- worm to change the character and climate of extensive regions is not a modern discovery. Forests of mighty trees that have withstood the battle and the breeze of centuries, whose hardihood and tenacity of life is great enough to enable them to survive the scorching and charring of their trunks by the fires that sweep again and again through the jungles, quickly succumb under the repeated attacks of myriads of seemingly despicable foes. In consequence of the extraordinary increase of a species of moth, innumer- able armies of caterpillars for one or two consecutive seasons devoured the leaves of the red gum-trees in the grand forests of Gippsland, amongst the finest in New Holland, and now the weird skeletons of these, the loftiest trees, some of them, in the world, mar the landscape. For another half century or more, they will remain as memorials of what was once the condition of the shadeless plains, the extent of which men are ruthlessly increasing daily, over which the winds coming off the sea, that heretofore had kept this an Australian Eden, will cease to part with their refi-eshing showers, as they once did over the " rain-bringmg " trees, and Avill carry their burthen on to the cool mountain slopes. The upheaval of the central region of Australia has been alluded to. The process goes on, and what is taking place in New Holland, New Zea- land, South America, and doubtless in Antarctic regions may be perhaps taken as evidence of the balance of weight becoming in favour of the northern polar ones ; those who adopt this theory will deem it strength- ened if instead of an open polar sea, it is found that they are covered with ever growing mountains of ice. The violence of the volcanic action in the far south is felt in the con- vulsive throes that disturb distant places, and which cause ever and anon a more rapid flow of the great covering of ice, sending off vaster streams of bergs than during periods of rest. The earthquake waves which notified the disturbance in 18G8, were certainly followed by such a fleet. It may be said that a considerable portion of Scandinavia is also rising; this may be a local consequence of the subsidence of a parallel belt of the adjacent ocean bottom, a meridional folding of the crust of the earth, as Mr. Campbell suggefsts. 16 Transax-Hoor). — AV/r Zealand a Posf-ijlacial i'entre of ^^'rratiini. 17 The " Glacial Epocli " ia Now Zealand is assumed by Dr. Haast, F.R.S., tj have beeu syuchroiious with the alleged period of the general reign of frost in northern regions, a id we are accustomed to hear of the " Pleistocene Glaciers " as those which have done the most work in the land of the moa. But there seem to be very good reasons for placing the age of their greatest extension back in plioc3ne times, about the time man was learning experience in Lemuria. When the Cordillera stood at an equally higher altitude as that t-laiuiod by Professor Fiamsay for the Swiss Alps, we may be well satisfied with the ability of the rain-bearing Aviuds coming round in their sweep back from equatorial regions over the warm Australian Sea to breed glaciers of magni- tude suflicient to do all the work claimed for them — to shape the sides of the valleys and glens, scoop out the basins of the southern lakes, grind out the fiords of the west coast, and break up and collect the materials for the formation of the sub-alpine plains, to be spread out there by the torrential rivers in after times, which, as the land has gradually risen again after partial submergence since, have left the remarkable terraces, whose symme- trical lines produce such a striking feature in the landscape— of magnitude suflicient to carry off masses of rock 20,000 tons in weight, if required, and deposit them as blocs perchrs below, with as much ease as those masses of Mont Blanc granite were borne along and left on the sides of the Rhone valley. Which operation probably they did perform, but the memorials being of less durable material, have disappeared under the gradual wear and tear of ages, or lie buried under the accumulations of gravel and sand on the plains, or beneath the sea. In both of these mountain systems, as in the Himalaya, changes in the dimensions of then" ice-streams, and debacles caused by the bursting of glacier dams, from time to time occur, on an insignificant scale it is true, when compared with what we may well believe went on in the days of their greatest grandeur, from local causes apparently, but which causes owe their origin to events going on in far distant regions. It is convenient sometimes to compare small things with great, and the operations proceeding quietly now, enable a judgment to be formed as to how the same causes, working with mere activity, might readily be able to repeat the phenomena that engage so much attention. The glaciers in the Swiss Alps, which had been retreating for thirty years, are advancing again at present, those descending from the heights of Monte Eosa are tearing up the green fields and overwhelming the gardens and homes of the peasantry, and, as the alternate advance and retreat of those of Mount Cook and adjacent mountains, present an evidence of the effect of ocean currents upon regions apparently far removed from their nfluence, b IM Tnn,sarlin!,s.—Mi,r^'ll(i>icnns. For some years previous to 1872, the antarctic stream came loaded with huge islands of ice, to an extent not witnessed by mariners since the route round Cape Plorn became so fi-O'piented a higlnvay as it has been since the gold discoveries. Navigation in those seas was for a time so extremely perilous that insurance companies became alarmed, and many shipmasters sgnt their vessels to strug'^dc back against tlie westerly winds by the Cape of Good Hope. Auotlier great separation of bergs from their parent glaciers, an occurrence which has no doubt gone on intermittently in all ages, happened in lH2i), as related by Sir Charles Lyell. Then, as in these late years, many bergs retained the dimensions of islands when they had reached the longitude of the Cape of Good Hope ; some had nearly circumnavigated tJie globe before they foundered in Australian seas, and one was still many miles in length when seen off Cape Leuwin, An excellent opportimity was afforded for the conveyance of seeds of the same plants if any are pro- duced or remain possessed of vitality in the soil of the lands from which they came, to different places in their route, a possibility dwelt upon by Mr. Darwin, in alluding to the sprinkling of tlio same flora in far distant regiiiis; it .soem.-s probable tliat ha 1 the climate been suitable, plants now unknown there might have by this means beeii brought far up into Australia when the laud was lower, as there is evidence of bergs having been drifted upin former times high into Spencer's Gulf, on the shoresof which large boulders of foreign rocks have been left by them. There are no data as yet upon which to found a tlieory as to the periodicity of these occurrences, which might connect the action of the main-spring which sets the maclnnery in motion, with rv\j of the many causes, magnetic, sidereal, etc., which have been proposed as influencing alternating cycles of dry and wet seasons — such as the return of ]3iela's comet every six and a half years — the time of the solar spots every eleven — the twelve-year cycle supposed to have to do with the long one of the revolution of the jjlanet Jupiter, etc., etc. How- ever this may bo, there is every reason for believing that when polar winds are more than usually cliillod over certain oceanic areas, they will blow with more force, and mingling with other aerial currents nearer to the tropics than in ordinary seasons, condense their moisture. Australian climates would be the principal ones affected by such a cause, so we find that after the great ice-stream alluded to, the following years were wet ones in the then occupied part of New South Wales. Again, in 1800, commenced a cycle of splendid seasons for the farmers all ovtr t'le Australias, dry plains were converted into lakes, and steamers ascended the tributaries of the Murrny more tlinn 1.500 miles. The consequences of the ice-stream were also felt in New Zealand, In CocKBURN-HooD. — XcH' Zealand a Posl-i/lacial Centre of Creation. lO 18G9 tlie writer visited tlie great Tasmau Glacier on the easteru flank of Mount Cook, wliicli then, as the Cashmere head of the Indus is represented to do, issued from under the terminal foot of the glacier in one grand foaming fountain, boiling up to a height of GO to 80 feet, " coming fi'om under an arch,' lofty, gloomy and Avernus-like, a large ready-formed river, whose colour was that of the soil collected at its source, rolling along immense masses of ice, and whirling them against the rocks with the noise of distant cannon." Some years jn-eviously, when the ice had retreated nearly half a mile, the river issued in two streams from under the lateral moraine on cither side of the glacier. A local glacial period was commencing, the operations of which became susp,eudcd since the amount of ice borne off by the antarctic current diminished again to its normal quantity, as it has done lately, and dry seasons have returned in Australia threatening ruin to the farmers and graziers. The more the subject is considered, and the effects observed of such agencies, the less necessary does it appear to call in the aid of extraordinary ones of which no traces are visible. Had there been a general ice-sheet covering New Zealand, its ancient littoral marine fauna which still exist, its moas, and other apterous birds must all have perished, and whence came again those forms of life from which they were developed ? It is scarcely to be conceived that this far island of the sea, situated in the latitude it is, w^ould be proposed to have been included in the narrow zone amidst universal ice, the crowded Alsatia Avhere ape-like men contended with men-like apes and divers other creatures Avith their respective congeners, in the dire struggle for existence that took place within its limited precincts, when the weakest, the least able to consider and provide against the exigencies of the situation, perished. It is not enough to have events so stupendous, and others still more startling, declared to have taken place at distances of time so enormous that the consideration of them leaves but an indefinite impression upon the mind, merely stated as facts, and related with an air of acknowledged authenticity, as the stories of the reign of Henry VIII., by Mr. Froude. Instead of engaging the attention of enquirers or allaying their scruples, such facetious }u-oposals are scarcely even calculated to afford as much amusement as the extension of Mr. Darwin's paradox, in the allusion to the correlation of old maids, mice, and roast beef. In his anxiety to prove the non-miraculous origin of the universe and all things therein. Professor Haickel assumes a tone of contemptuous pity towards those persons who refuse to profess then- absolute faith in the irrational dogma that the primordial forms were endowed with life and the power of propagation of their own instance. Considering that " what we 20 Transact io)i.^. — Mi.'