Such an hypothesis enables us to dispense with the doctrine that the same species ever originated independently in two distinct and distant areas; and it becomes more feasible if we admit the doctrine of the co-existence of meridional belts of warmer and colder climate, instead of the simultaneous prevalence of extreme cold both in the eastern and western hemisphere. It also seems necessary, as colder currents of water always flow to lower latitudes, while warmer ones are running towards polar regions, that some such compensation should take place, and that an increase of cold in one region must to a certain extent be balanced by a mitigation of temperature elsewhere.
Sir John F. Herschel, in his recent work on "Physical Geography," when speaking of the open sea which is caused in part of the polar regions by the escape of ice through Behring's Straits, and the flow of warmer water northwards through the same channel, observes that these straits, by which the continents of Asia and North America are now parted, "are only thirty miles broad where narrowest and only twenty-five fathoms in their greatest depth." But "this narrow channel," he adds, "is yet important in the economy of nature, inasmuch as it allows a portion of the circulating water from a warmer region to find its way into the polar basin, aiding thereby not only to mitigate the extreme rigour of the polar cold, but to prevent in all probability a continual accretion of ice, which else might rise to a mountainous height."*
(* Herschel's "Physical Geography" page 41 1861.)
Behring's Straits, here alluded to, happen to agree singularly in width and depth with the Straits of Dover, the difference in depth not being more than 3 or 4 feet; so that at the rate of upheaval, which is now going on in many parts of Scandinavia, of 2 1/2 feet in a century, such straits might be closed in 3000 years, and a vast accumulation of ice to the northward commence forthwith.
But, on the other hand, although such an accumulation might spread its refrigerating influence for many miles southwards beyond the new barrier, the warm current which now penetrates through the straits, and which at other times is chilled by floating ice issuing from them, would when totally excluded from all communication with the icy sea have its temperature raised and its course altered, so that the climate of some other area must immediately begin to improve.
There is still another probable cause of a vast change in the temperature of central Europe in comparatively modern times, to which no allusion has yet been made; namely, the conversion of the great desert of the Sahara from sea into land since the commencement of the Pleistocene period. When that vast region was still submerged, no sirocco blowing for days in succession carried its hot blasts from a wide expanse of burning sand across the Mediterranean. The south winds were comparatively cool, allowing the snows of the Alps to augment to an extent which the colossal dimensions of the moraines of extinct glaciers can alone enable us to estimate.
The scope and limits of this volume forbid my pursuing these speculations and reasonings farther; but I trust I have said enough to show that the monuments of the glacial period, when more thoroughly investigated, will do much towards expanding our views as to the antiquity of the fauna and flora now contemporary with Man, and will therefore enable us the better to determine the time at which Man began in the northern hemisphere to form part of the existing fauna. [Note 37]
CHAPTER 19. — RECAPITULATION OF GEOLOGICAL PROOFS OF MAN'S ANTIQUITY.
Recapitulation of Results arrived at in the earlier Chapters.
Ages of Stone and Bronze.
Danish Peat and Kitchen-Middens.
Swiss Lake-Dwellings.
Local Changes in Vegetation and in the wild and domesticated
Animals and in Physical Geography coeval with the Age of
Bronze and the later Stone Period.
Estimates of the positive Date of some Deposits of the later
Stone Period.
Ancient Division of the Age of Stone of St. Acheul and Aurignac.
Migrations of Man in that Period from the Continent to England
in Post-Glacial Times.
Slow Rate of Progress in barbarous Ages.
Doctrine of the superior Intelligence and Endowments of the
original Stock of Mankind considered.
Opinions of the Greeks and Romans, and their Coincidence with
those of the Modern Progressionist.