SIGNS OF ANOTHER FLOOD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18089, 13 May 1922, Page 8 (Supplement)

SIGNS OF ANOTHER FLOOD.

SOME STARTLING-THEORIES.

MELTING OF POLAR ICECAPS.

In many parts of the world geologists find signs that seem to point to a time when the sea-level was much higher than il is now. In British Columbia, along tho Rocky Mountains and the Andes, and on many mountain ranges of the Old World also, arc prehistorical sea, beaches, all at an average of 1000 feet abovo tho present margin of tho sea.

Many regions of high land have, wo know from other evidence, been bodily raised by volcanic action or by the crinkling of tho earth's surface (tho Himalayas, for instance, though the biggost, is almost tho youngest mountain rango), but tho existanco of so many old beaches at about the same height above tho present beaches has .suggested tho theory that tho sea itself was onco a thousand foot deeper than it is to-day.

If po. what has become, of tho enormous mass of water that vanished, or was withdrawn -when tho ocean level fell 1000 foety It ir. now held prisoner in tho polar icecaps, and especially in that of tho South Polo. The world, wo know, has at immense intervals alternated between glacial epochs and warm epochs. Those high beaches wero mado by the sea, it. is averred, when in the last warm epoch both polar icecaps had shrunk to their smallest dimensions, and all tho water pout up in high-piled ice fields and glaciers had been released to find its level over the globe. Then came a glacial epoch with <t reforming of tho ico and a shrinking of the soa to a level much lower 'than its present. We are now, it in believed, slowly approaching another warm epoch, when", if it becomes universal, effecting both hemispheres together, the iro will again molt, and tho sea rise to its ancient level, submerging an enormous proportion of what is now dry aud thickly populated land. According to another veiw, tho molting of tho ico and rise of the sea may occur comparatively suddenly instead of being a very gradual process, spread over many centuries. The formation of ice is not oqual at lwth Poles; the. Antarctic icecap is much tho more extensive and moro massive, and, they hold, it is actually still increasing by evaporation from tho immense sea. areas of the Southorn hemisphere and condensation over the great ice-covered Antarctic Continent.

With ice ever forming abovo a sea growing gradually warmer below, the process must eventually overbalance, tho undermined glaciers disintegrate, and the icecap break up. Mountain after mountain of ice will fall into the sea, be swept northward by the currents, and molt, thus bringing about, but at a much moro rapid into, the threatened inundation of the land bv the rising of the sea to its ancient level. Conceivably some such breaking-up of a polar icecap has occured onro beforo since man appeared on the earth. The Biblical deluge and the almost universal story, common to the mythology traditions of peoples in all parts of tho world, of a world-wide flood may have had origin in the melting of tho ico at tho Pole, and tho pouring toward the equator of the pent-up waters.