The continent at that time stretched westward beyond the Hebrides
and some two hundred miles beyond Ireland. The ice-front followed
this curve, casting icebergs into the Atlantic, then probably
advanced up what is now the Bristol Channel, and ran across
England and Europe, in a broken line, from Bristol to Poland.
South of this line there were smaller ice-fields round the higher
mountains, north of it almost the whole country presented the
appearance that we find in Greenland to-day.
In North America the glaciation was even more extensive. About
four million square miles of the present temperate zone were
buried under ice and snow. From Greenland, Labrador, and the
higher Canadian mountains the glaciers poured south, until, in
the east, the mass of ice penetrated as far as the valley of the
Mississippi. The great lakes of North America are permanent
memorials of its Ice-Age, and over more than half the country we
trace the imprint and the relics of the sheet. South America,
Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand had their glaciated areas.
North Asia was largely glaciated, but the range of the ice-sheet
is not yet determined in that continent.
Pages:
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444