Geological Climates

Abstract

SOME weeks since the Rev. Prof. Haughton took exception to a brief letter of mine, in which I suggested that as a bamboo flourishes in Cooper's Hill College garden, in a northern aspect winter after winter, it could be used effectually in an argument relating to geological climates. The bamboo being found in torrid India now, that at Cooper's Hill, if found in a future period, would, according to some geologists, indicate that the valley of the Thames was tropical formerly. My letter was written because the Rev. Professor had written a very long one, in which he applied this kind of bad reasoning in relation to a bit of a leafy part of a tree found at Bournemouth in an Eocene deposit. The leaves of his bit resemble those of Araucaria Cunninghami squashed; nevertheless a thermometric virtue is given to the fossil because this Araucaria is native in districts in Eastern Australia.