GLACIAL MAPtKIXOS ON VANCOUVEE ISLAND. 83 



where ptirallel with the coast. If there was a fixed mass of ice there, it must 

 have been a glacier coming down the straits, and not one descending from 

 the hioher parts of the ishmd. On ascending to the higher land a few miles 

 north of Victorin, the glacial markings were found not to extend up to any 

 great height : none were seen at an elevation greater than a hundred feet. 

 At one point, at an elevation of 150 feet above the sea, an angular fragment 

 of granite eight feet long and high, and about six broad, was observed lying 

 upon a surface of metamori)hic rock, which was not in the slightest degree 

 smoothed or polished. The impression made upon the writer by an examina- 

 tion, necessarily hasty, of the southern end of Vancouver Island was, that all 

 the phenomena presented in that vicinity could be best accounted for by the 

 supposition that large icebergs had passed down the Straits at a time when 

 the glaciers coming down the coast farther north were considerably larger 

 than they now are, and that these bergs had dropped occasional boulders on 

 the surfoce, and had here and there produced those striations which are 

 abundantly vouched for by Arctic explorers as being often made at the pres- 

 ent day by floating ice. This tlieorj' presupposes a slight elevation of the 

 land in that region since the time of the greatest extension of the glaciers, 

 and such a rise is quite in harmony Avith facts observed at many points on 

 the coast forther south. Mr. Gabb also noticed the glaciation near Victoria, 

 but his notes make no reference to any such phenomena in the vicinity of 

 Nanaimo. Mr. H. Bauerman* also speaks of the scratched and grooved 

 rocks in the vicinity of Esquimalt and Victoria, but does not mention their 

 occurrence anywhere else on the island. Mr. J. F. Campbell says : •' As soon 

 as I spied the rocks at Victoria, I recognized the familiar glaciated form. 

 The direction of movement was parallel to the axis of Puget Sound, at right 

 angles to the strait which opens into it from the Pacific Ocean. It follows 

 that all this water drift, with rare glacial boulders in it, rests upon glaciated 

 rocks. Because of shells found in the drift, the glacial period here was 

 marine." Mr. Selwyn also noticed the appearances at Victoria,! and says : 

 " Of the existence of ice-grooves on the shore of Vancouver Island there can 

 be no question. Inland neither Mr. Richardson nor I observed any." 



There is considerable evidence, on the other hand, that Vancouver Island 

 has been the theatre of a much more extensive glaciation than would be in- 



* In an article entitled, "On the Geology of the Southeasteru Part of Vancouver Island," Quarterly Journal 

 of the Geological Society, Vol. XVI. p. 198. 



+ Geological Survey of Canada. Report of Progress for 1S71-72, p. 53. 



