Here, then, in conclusion, are the evidences that the deposits of the
Drift are not due to continental ice-sheets:

I. The present ice-sheets of the remote north create no such deposits
and make no such markings.

II. A vast continental elevation of land-surfaces at the north was
necessary for the ice to slide down, and this did not exist.

III. The ice-sheet, if it made the Drift markings, must have scored
the rocks going up-hill, while it did not score them going down-hill.

IV. If the cold formed the ice and the ice formed the Drift, why is
there no Drift in the coldest regions of the earth, where there must
have been ice?

V. Continental ice-belts, reaching to 40° of latitude, would have
exterminated all tropical vegetation. It was not exterminated,
therefore such ice-sheets could not have existed.

VI. The Drift is found in the equatorial regions of the world. If it
was produced by an ice-sheet in those regions, all pre-glacial forms
of life must have perished; but they did not perish; therefore the
ice-sheet could not

[1. "Popular Science Monthly," April, 1874, p. 646.]

{p. 42}

have covered these regions, and could not have produced the