Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 389

CHAPTER IV. OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED.

Ler me consider, briefly, those objections to my theory which have probably presented themseyles to some of my readers.

First, it may be said :

“ We don’t understand you. You argue that there could not have been such an ice-age as the glacialists af-

firm, and yet you speak of a period of cold and ice and snow.’

True: but there is a great difference between such a climate as that of Scotland, damp and cold, snowy and blowy, and a continental ice-sheet, a mile or two thick, reaching from John o’ Groat’s House to the Mediterranean. We can see that the oranges of Spain can grow to-day within a comparatively short distance of Edinburgh ; but we can not realize that any tropical or semitropical plant could have survived in Africa when a precipice of ice, five thousand feet high, frowned on the coast of Italy ; or that any form of life could have survived on earth when the equator in South America was covered with a continental ice-sheet a mile in thickness, or even ten feet in thickness. We can conceive of a glacial age of snow-storms, rains, hail, and wind—a terribly trying and disagreeable climate for man and beast—but we can not believe that the whole world was once in the condition that the dead waste of ice-coyered Greenland is in now.