Island Life; Or, The Phenomena and Causes of Insular Faunas and Floras. Alfred Russel Wallace
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nature have been observed in other parts of our islands. In the east of England, Mr. Skertchly (of the Geological Survey) enumerates four distinct boulder clays with intervening deposits of gravels and sands.[38] Mr. Searles V. Wood, Jun., classes the most recent (Hessle) boulder clay as "post-glacial," but he admits an intervening warmer period, characterised by southern forms of mollusca and insects, after which glacial conditions again prevailed with northern types of mollusca.[39] Elsewhere he says: "Looking at the presence of such fluviatile mollusca as Cyrena fluminalis and Unio littoralis and of such mammalia as the hippopotamus and other great pachyderms, and of such a littoral Lusitanian fauna as that of the Selsea bed where it is mixed up with the remains of some of those pachyderms, as well as of some other features, it has seemed to me that the climate of the earlier part of the post-glacial period in England was possibly even warmer than our present climate; and that it was succeeded by a refrigeration sufficiently severe to cause ice to form all round our coasts, and glaciers to accumulate in the valleys of the mountain districts; and that this increased severity of climate was preceded, and partially accompanied, by a limited submergence, which nowhere apparently exceeded 300 feet, and reached that amount only in the northern counties of England."[40] This decided admission of an alternation of warm and cold climates since the height of the glacial epoch by so cautious a geologist as Mr. Wood is very important, as is his statement of an accompanying depression of the land, accompanying the increased cold, because many geologists maintain that a greater elevation of the land is the true and sufficient explanation of glacial periods.
Further evidence of this alternation is found both in the Isle of Man and in Ireland, where two distinct boulder clays have been described with intervening beds of gravels and sands.
Palæontological Evidence of Alternate Cold and Warm Periods.—Especially suggestive of a period warmer than the present, immediately following glacial conditions, is the occurrence of the hippopotamus in caves, brick-earths, and gravels of palæolithic age. Entire skeletons of this animal have been found at Leeds in a bed of dark blue clay overlaid by gravel. Further north at Kirkdale cave, in N. Lat. 54° 15′, remains of the hippopotamus occur abundantly along with those of the Elephas antiquus, Rhinoceros hemitœchus, reindeer, bear, horse, and other quadrupeds, and with countless remains of the hyænas which devoured them; while it has also been found in cave deposits in Glamorganshire, at Durdham Down near Bristol, and in the post-Pliocene drifts of England and France.
The fact of the hippopotamus having lived at 54° N. Lat. in England immediately after the glacial period seems quite inconsistent with a mere gradual amelioration of climate from that time till the present day. The entirely tropical distribution of the existing animal and the large quantity of vegetable food which it requires both indicate a much warmer climate than now prevails in any part of Europe. The problem, however, is complicated by the fact that, both in the cave-deposits and river gravels, its remains are often found associated with those of animals that imply a cold climate, such as the reindeer, the mammoth, or the woolly rhinoceros. At this time the British Isles were joined to the Continent, and a great river formed by the union of the Rhine, the Elbe and all the eastern rivers of England, flowed northward through what is now the German Ocean. The hippopotamus appears to have been abundant in Central Europe before the glacial epoch, but during the height of the cold was probably driven to the south of France, whence it may have returned by way of the Rhone valley, some of the tributaries of that river approaching those of the Rhine within a mile or two a little south-west of Mulhausen, whence it would easily reach Yorkshire. Professor Boyd Dawkins supposes that at this time our summers were warm, as in Middle Asia and the United States, while the winters were cold, and that the southern and northern animals migrated to and fro over the great plains which extended from Britain to the Continent. The following extract indicates how such a migration was calculated to bring about the peculiar association of sub-tropical and arctic forms.
"It must not, however, be supposed that the southern animals migrated from the Mediterranean area as far north as Yorkshire in the same year, or the northern as far south as the Mediterranean. There were, as we shall see presently, secular changes of climate in Pleistocene Europe, and while the cold was at its maximum the arctic animals arrived at the southern limit, and while it was at its minimum the spotted hyæna and hippopotamus and other southern animals roamed to their northern limit. Thus every part of the middle zone has been successively the frontier between the northern and southern groups, and consequently their remains are mingled together in the caverns and river-deposits, under conditions which prove them to have been contemporaries in the same region. In some of the caverns, such as that of Kirkdale, the hyæna preyed upon the reindeer at one time of the year and the hippopotamus at another. In this manner the association of northern and southern animals may be explained by their migration according to the seasons; and their association over so wide an area as the middle zone, by the secular changes of climate by which each part of the zone in turn was traversed by the advancing and retreating animals."[41]
When we consider that remains of the hippopotamus have been found in the caves of North Wales and Bristol as well as in those of Yorkshire, associated in all with the reindeer and in some with the woolly rhinoceros or the mammoth, and that the animal must have reached these localities by means of slow-flowing rivers or flooded marshes by very circuitous routes, we shall be convinced that these long journeys from the warmer regions of South Europe could not have been made during the short summers of the glacial period. Thus the very existence of such an animal in such remote localities closely associated with those implying almost an arctic winter climate appears to afford a strong support to the argument for the existence of warm inter-glacial or post-glacial periods.
Evidence of Interglacial Warm Periods on the Continent and in North America.—Besides the evidence already adduced from our own islands, many similar facts have been noted in other countries. In Switzerland two glacial periods are distinctly recognised, between which was a warm period when vegetation was so luxuriant as to form beds of lignite sufficiently thick to be worked for coal. The plants found in these deposits are similar to those now inhabiting Switzerland—pines, oaks, birches, larch, etc., but numerous animal remains are also found, showing that the country was then inhabited by an elephant (Elephas antiquus), a rhinoceros (Rhinoceros megarhinus), the urus (Bos primigenius), the red deer (Cervus elephas), and the cave-bear, (Ursus spelœus); and there were also abundance of insects.[42]
In Sweden also there are two "tills," the lower one having been in places partly broken up and denuded before the upper one was deposited, but no interglacial deposits have yet been found. In North America more complete evidence has been obtained. On the shores of Lake Ontario sections are exposed showing three separate beds of "till" with intervening stratified deposits, the lower one of which has yielded many plant remains and fresh-water organisms. These deposits are seen to extend continuously for more than nine miles, and the fossiliferous interglacial beds attain a thickness of 140 feet. Similar beds have been discovered near Cleveland, Ohio, consisting, first of "till" at the lake-level, secondly of about 48 feet of sand and loam, and thirdly of unstratified "till" full of striated stones—six feet thick.[43] On the other side of the continent, in British Columbia, Mr. G. M. Dawson, geologist to the North American Boundary Commission, has discovered similar evidence of two glaciations divided from each other by a warm period.
This remarkable series of observations, spread over so wide an area, seems to afford ample proof that the glacial epoch did not consist merely of one process of change, from a temperate to a cold and arctic climate, which having reached a maximum, then passed slowly and completely away; but that there were certainly two, and probably several more alternations of arctic and temperate climates.
It is evident, however, that if there have been, not two only, but a series of such alternations of climate, we could not possibly expect to find more than the most slender indications of them, because each succeeding ice-sheet would necessarily grind down or otherwise destroy much of the superficial deposits left by its predecessors, while the torrents that must always have accompanied the melting of these huge masses of ice would wash away even such fragments as might have escaped the ice itself. It is a fortunate thing therefore, that we should find any fragments of these interglacial deposits containing animal