Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 March 1882 — The Gulf Stream and Europe. [ARTICLE]

The Gulf Stream and Europe.

There was a time within the human epoch, says James Geikie, in au article on “ The Gulf Stream and the Panama Canal,” when the European climate was so genial that many delicate southern species of plants flourished luxuriantly in regions where they cannot now exist. Thus in the neighborhood of Paris, the fig tree, the laurel of the Canary Islands, and other Southern species, found a congenial habitat. The Canary Island laurel does not grow further north now than near Toulon, on the borders of the Mediterranean. It flowers in winter, and repeated frosts would therefore prevent its reproducing its kind. That this plant formerly flourished near Paris is thus a striking proof of changed climatic conditions, for the winters in Northern France must then have been extremely genial. The land and fresh-water shells which were contemporaneous with that remarkable flora in Northwestern Europe tell preciselv the same tale, and this is still further illustrated and confirmed by the character of the mammalian fauna. Among the commoner animals at that time occupants of England, France, etc., were hippopotami, elephants, rhinoceroses, lions, tigers, hyenas, etc., and vast numbers of cervine and bovine animals which still occupy the temperate latitudes of Europe. That such genial climatic conditions were due in large measure to a great increase in the volume of warm water flowing into the North Atlantio seems just as certain as that the Arctic climate of the glacial period was largely induced by a very considerable decrease or even an entire stoppage of that heat-bearing current. The presence of many Mediterranean shells in the ancient raised beaches of Scandinavia, the occurrence of mussel banks in the coast-lands of Spitzbergen, the appearance here and there off the coasts of Scotland, the Faroes and Iceland, of Sourthern species of shell-fish, and the presence of isolated colonies of Southern mollusks in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, are all indicative of a former much greater influx' of warm water into Northern regions than is now the case. Those remarkable oolonies of Southern species are living evidence of the last epoch of extremely genial conditions experienced in Northwestern Europe—an epoch during which great forest growths overspread wide regions in the North—covering the British Islands, the inner and outer Hebrides, the Orkneys and the Shetland Islands, all Norway up to the extreme north, and most extensive areas which to-day lie submerged in the sea.