Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

46 THE DRIFT.

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.” *

And again :

“The drift was accumulated where it is by some violent action.” +

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 oyer which these gigantic conyulsions 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.” f

M. Ch. Martius 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 haye be-

* “ American Cyclopedia,” vol. vi, p. 114. + Ibid., vol. vi, p. 111. $ “The World before the Deluge,” p. 485.