where the Drift is not, then we can not escape the conclusion that
the cold and the ice did not make the Drift.

Let us see: One of the coldest regions of the earth is Siberia. It is
a vast tract reaching to the Arctic Circle; it is the north part of
the Continent of Asia; it is intersected by great mountain-ranges.
Here, if anywhere, we should find the Drift; here, if anywhere, was
the ice-field, "the sea of ice." It is more elevated and more
mountainous than the interior of North America where the
drift-deposits are extensive; it is nearer the pole than New York and
Illinois, covered as these are with hundreds of feet of _débris_, and
yet _there is no Drift in Siberia!_

I quote from a high authority, and a firm believer in the theory that
glaciers or ice-sheets caused the drift; James Geikie says:

"It is remarkable that _nowhere in the great plains of Siberia do any
traces of glacial action appear to have_

{p. 29}

_been observed._ If cones and mounds of gravel and great erratics
like those that sprinkle so wide an area in Northern America and
Northern Europe had occurred, they would hardly have failed to arrest
the attention of explorers. Middendorff does, indeed, mention the
occurrence of trains of large erratics which he observed along the
banks of some of the rivers, but these, he has no doubt, were carried
down by river-ice. The general character of the 'tundras' is that of
wide, flat plains, covered for the most part with a grassy and mossy
vegetation, but here and there bare and sandy. Frequently nothing