I.—On the Former Climate of the Polar Regions

Extract

Only a few years ago it was looked upon as an article of faith among geologists, that the whole globe was once in a melted incandescent state, and that the conditions of temperature now prevailing on the surface of the earth have been in process of time produced by the slow gradual cooling of the once fused and glowing mass. It then appeared so natural that, in consequence of the earth’s internal heat, a tropical climate should extend from pole to pole, that no special weight was attached to the evidences of this fact which geology was at that time able to produce. The Dane Giesecke’s and the English Scoresby’s specimens of fossil plants from the east and west coasts of Greenland, evidencing a warm climate there, attracted so little attention, that neither they, nor the fossil remains of Saurians found by the famous Arctic traveller Sir Edward Belcher in the American Polar Archipelago, could be found in the museums to which they had been confided.