Note on Traces of Recent Ice-action in N. China

Extract

The question whether N. China was under the grip of Polar severity towards the close of the Tertiary or the beginning of the Pleistocene time, and whether there was sufficient precipitation to allow the existence of large glaciers even if the temperature had become for a time arctic, has, on account of its important bearing on the problem of the cause of glaciation, aroused from time to time forcible but conflicting arguments. As cumulative evidence tends to show the wide prevalence of desert conditions all over N. China throughout recent geological times, geologists seem to have generally agreed, and naturally so, to provide a negative answer to the second part of the question. But as to the first part, it remains so far completely shrouded in doubt. In matter of this kind nobody would expect to wrest out truth by mere theoretical contention. Any relevant fact, therefore, deserves to be placed on record.