of the temperature at the quaternary age, and account for the
uninterrupted life of the fauna and flora. However, we must not fall
into the opposite excess and assert, as some have done, that the
glacial period is comparatively recent, the traces of which are too
plain and fresh in some localities to assign to it an age prior to
man, and that the temperature has rather lowered itself since this
epoch. The ancient extension of the glaciers has been followed by a
corresponding growth and extension of animal life, thus proving that
the permanence of glaciers is a wise provision and absolutely
essential to man and the high orders of animals and vegetation. The
ancient extension does not prove alone that it was much colder than in
historic times, for the animals themselves are proof of this. At that
time the plains of Europe, and of France in particular, were animated
by herds of reindeer, gluttons, camels, and marmots, which one does
not find to-day except in the higher latitudes or more considerable
heights. The mammoth and rhinoceros are no exception to this, for
naturalists know they were organized to live in cold countries.

Space will not permit us to pursue this point further, or speculate on
the probable climatic conditions of the ice age; but we can carry
ourselves back a few thousand years and describe the climate of Europe
and neighboring countries of Africa and Asia. Herodotus describes the
climate of Scythia in terms which would indicate in our day the
countries of Lapland and Greenland. He shows us the country completely
frozen during eight months of the year; the Black Sea frozen up so
that it bore the heaviest loads; the region of the Danube buried under
snow for eight months, and watered in summer by the abundant rains
which gave to the river its violent course. The historian adds that
the ass cannot live in Scythia on account of the extreme cold which
reigns there. The following century Aristotle makes the same remarks