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THE

JOURNAL OF GEOLOGY

NOVEMBER-DECEMBER, 1893.

THE SUPPOSED GLACIATION OF BRAZIL.[1]

The inquiries I have received from time to time regarding the supposed glaciation of Brazil in Pleistocene times, the doubts sometimes expressed regarding it, and the occasional appeals made to it,[2] induce me to state briefly what I know about the matter.

Strangely enough the errors of Agassiz, Hartt and Belt regarding glaciation in Brazil have been turned to account both by those who have theories that need support they think the glaciation of Brazil would give them, and also by those who seek by means of these errors to throw discredit on the subject of glacial geology.

I believe the case has been generally dropped by geologists as not proven, but I am confident that no one wishes to ignore the evidence "merely because it runs counter to all his preconceived opinions."[3]

EARLY VIEWS OF AGASSIZ AND HARTT.

When Professor Louis Agassiz made his trip to Brazil in 1865, on board the steamer going out he gave a series of

  1. ↑ Advance quotations are made from this article by Dr. Alfred R. Wallace in Nature, Vol. 48, No. 1251. Oct. 19, 1893, 589-590.
  2. ↑ The Glacial Nightmare and the Flood, by Sir Henry H. Howorth, London, 1893.Marsden Manson, in the Trans. of the Geol. Soc. of Australasia, I., pt. VI., 155-170, and in the Trans. of the Tech. Soc. of the Pacific Coast, VIII., No. 2, 19.Geological and Solar Climates; their Causes and Variations, by Marsden Manson, University of California, May, 1893.Ragnarok, by Ignatius Donelly.
  3. ↑ Wallace: Nature, Vol. II., 1880, 511.
Vol. I., No. 8.
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