FORAMINIFERA IN THE DRIFT 
47 
ray criticisms will be readily accepted, yet they may possibly 
help in clearing up some points which hitherto could not be 
satisfactorily elucidated by other methods. The vast drift 
deposits which shroud the country like a great mantle of clay, 
sand and stones, frequently contain the remains of the ex¬ 
clusively marine group of foraminifera. Mr. Joseph Wright, 
a well-known European authority, has shown that the species 
of foraminifera have a very wide distribution in European 
boulder-clays. And it appears, on the authority of Sir Henry 
Howorth,* that Mr. Wright has likewise identified foramini¬ 
fera from American glacial clays. Samples were .submitted 
to him by the late Dr. G. Dawson from Saskatchewan 
River, 1,850 feet above sea-level, from Selkirk in Manitoba, 
and from Ottawa. The sample from Saskatchewan contained 
specimens of foraminifera referable to recent species, one 
of which (Nonionina depressula) is also common in European 
boulder-clays. 
It is quite possible that foraminifera may be found in many 
other localities in the same clays ; indeed, Sir Henry Howorth 
mentions that Sir William Dawson had found them generally 
diffused in the Pleistocene clays of Canada. This fact, there¬ 
fore, tends to support Colonel Feilden’sf contention that all 
the glacial deposits which he had examined in Arctic and Polar 
lands, with the exception of terminal moraines now forming 
above sea-level, are glacio-marine beds. 
Supposing the waters of the Arctic Ocean had risen, per¬ 
haps in consequence of the closing of the Atlantic Ocean, 
and had poured into Hudson Bay, overflowing its banks, 
and had then crossed the low-lying watershed separating 
this northern region from the depressions of the Great Lakes, 
the latter would soon have been filled with brackish water, 
killing or driving away many of those forms of life that were 
unable to adapt themselves to this change of conditions. I 
presume, of course, that troughs, not necessarily like the 
lakes now existing, already occupied the same region in pre- 
Glacial times. Such an hypothesis of this area having been 
invaded by the sea in Pleistocene times is supported by some 
* Howorth, H. H., “Ice or Water,” Vol. II., p. 216. 
t Feilden, H. W., “ Glacial Geology of Arctic Europe,” p. 57. 
