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Upheaval is the one constant and clearly recognisable feature associated with, or preceding, ice-ages. We saw this in the case of the Cambrian, Permian, Eocene, and Pleistocene periods of cold, and may add that there are traces of a rise of mountains before the glaciation of which we find traces in the middle of the Archaean Era.
The chief ice-age was some hundreds of thousands of years ago, that is all we can say with any confidence. In dismissing the question of climate, however, we should note that a very serious problem remains unsolved. As far as present evidence goes we seem to be free to hold that the ice-ages which have at long intervals invaded the chronicle of the earth were due to rises of the land.
To this theory, again, it is objected that we do not find the regular succession of ice-ages in the story of the earth which the theory demands, and that there is no evidence of an alternation of the ice between the northern and southern hemispheres.
Some, indeed, speak of a series of Ice-Ages, but we need not discuss the verbal question. It is now beyond question that the ice-sheet advanced and retreated several times during the Glacial Epoch. The American and some English geologists distinguished six ice-sheets, with five intermediate periods of more temperate climate.
All is fixed, ordained, immovable. Star-drifts and ice-ages she knows nothing about, and if she did they would not alter in the least her rules of conduct for men and women in this world and in relation to the next.
I have bearded and bitten the frozen seas, and, aforetime of that, ere ever the ice-ages came to be, I have dripped my shoulders in reindeer gore, slain the mastodon and the sabre-tooth, scratched the record of my prowess on the walls of deep- buried caves ay, and suckled she-wolves side by side with my brother- cubs, the scars of whose fangs are now upon me."
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