Note 1656 — Chapter VI · (continued 2)

J. Adhémer, Revolutions de la Mer, who advocates this theory, connects with it the movement of the apsides, and thinks that it is the consequent great accumulation of ice at the north pole which by its weight displaces the centre of gravity; and as the action is transferred from one pole to the other, the periodic oscillation of that centre of gravity is thus caused. The theory no doubt borrows something of its force with some minds from the great law of mutability in nature. That it is a grand field for such theorizers as Lorenzo Burge, his Preglacial Man and the Aryan Race shows; but authorities like Lyell and Sir John Herschel find no sufficient reason in it for the great ice-sheet which they contend for. Cf. H. Le Hon’s Influence des lois cosmiques sur la climatologie et la géologie (Bruxelles, 1868). W. B. Galloway’s Science and Geology in relation to the Universal Deluge (Lond., 1888) points out what he thinks the necessary effects of such changes of axis. J. D. Whitney (Climatic changes of later geological times, Mem. Mus. Comp. Zoöl., vii. 392, 394) disbelieves all these views, and contends that the most eminent astronomers and climatologists are opposed to them.