The Autobiography of the Earth; A Popular Account of Geological History (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1891. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XVI THE ICE-AGE AND ADVENT OF MAN ' Then the monster, then the Man j Tattooed or woaded, winter-clad in skins, Raw from the prime and crushing down his mate; As yet we find in barbarous isles, and here Among the lowest." Tennyson's Princess. It is difficult to believe that the larger part of Great Britain was once buried up under a great series of glaciers united together to form one continuous ice-sheet, which buried mountains and lowlands, and that the climate of this country was such as we now find in Arctic regions. But this was undoubtedly the case, though it requires a considerable effort of imagination to picture "Merry England" with no bright green grass, no woods, no fertile valleys or pleasant streams, but simply one vast silent snowfield of dazzling brightness Those, however, who have spent a winter in the Highlands of Scotland and seen the snows covering the Grampians, or traversed the glaciers and snow-fields of high Alps, have had, as it were, a glimpse of the "Great Ice Age" in Britain, of which we will now endeavour to put "before the reader a brief account, as far as this difficult and perplexing chapter in the Earth's autobiography has yet been interpreted by geologists.1 The evidences on which the above startling conclusion is based are so many and so convincing as to admit of no possible doubt whatever. But though the fact of the existence of a former period of intense cold in Northern Europe, Asia, and America is unmistakably recorded in a way that can be understood by the youngest beginner in geology, yet unfortunately the details and minor incidents of these times, now generally known as the Glacial period, are involved in a good deal of obscurity. As a rule the records of the oldest rocks, that is those which come lowest ...