Real Climate Records

Among the most interesting and perplexing subjects in geology are the extremes of climate which have occurred at remote geological intervals in the same latitudes.

It is difficult to realize that at no greater distance of time than the middle of the Tertiary Period forests of oak and beach, and a flora characteristic of the warmer temperate zone, flourished

within the Arctic Circle, where at present no trees can grow, and that at the close of the same period a great refrigeration occurred, immense glaciers covering the British Islands and all Northern and Central Europe.

This, however, is the case, and the morainic matter transported by these great ice-sheets has been spread over many thousands of square miles of land in the temporate latitudes, shallowing the adjacent seas with the accumulated debris.

It is still more startling to be told that Southern Australia, with its present semi-tropical heat, has also had, and in no insignificant degree, its glacial experiences.

Eighteen years ago Professor Tate made the announcement that a few miles south of Adelaide there were proofs of ice action, and that at some time a glacier must have occupied more or less of the present valley of Gulf St. Vincent.

Whilst collecting sea shells at Hallett’s Cove, soon after his arrival in the colony, he stumbled on what are by far the finest examples of ice-polished surfaces to be seen in Australia. These burnished and ice scratched rocks can be traced at intervals along the top of the sea cliffs for a distance of two or three miles. If any doubt remained as to their origin it must have been dispelled when in association there was found the characteristic “till,” or glacial clay, containing innumerable ice worn and scratched stones, and many hundreds of large “erratics,” or travelled stones, some of which weigh several tons, and must have been transported fifty or seventy miles.