312 DAWSON A.ND PENHALLOW — PLEISTOCENE FLORA. 



proximity of land clothed with vegetation. In the interior they are, bo far 

 as known, destitute of marine remains, but hold remains of land plants and 

 even beds of peat with a few fresh-water shells. These beds are those known 



in the interior region as " interglacial." They Mem to vary much Locally 

 in composition and thickness, and are sometimes absent Where they are 

 absent or replaced by bowlder clay, the latter occasionally contains drift 

 trunks and branches of trees. 



3. Sand-, coarse day-, and gravels, often stratified, sometimes ( taining 



traveled bowlders throughout. In other eases there are bowlders at the 

 base of the deposit and also at its Burface, the intervening beds being destitute 

 of bowlders. In the maritime regions these beds often contain marine shells 

 and are the Saxbeava Bands and gravels. Inland they are unfossiliferous or 

 have a tew drift plants, sometimes of sufficient importance to he reckoned as 

 a Becond or upper interglacial bed. These beds constitute the upper or 

 newer bowlder formation. Their traveled bowlders are often of ^reat size, 

 and have been as a whole carried farther and deposited at higher levels than 

 those of the older bowlder formation. 



Above the third member are alluvial deposits, lake terraoes, gravel ridges 

 ami eskers, prairie silt, peat beds, etc., which may he regarded as early 

 modern or post-( ilaeial. 



More detailed descriptions of the Pleistocene deposits of Canada will be 



found in the author's " Notes on the Post-Pliocene of Canada : " :; also in his 

 " Acadian ( Seology " and " Handbook of Canadian ( reology."1 



Fossil plants appear in these deposits in various places, from the Atlantic 

 coast to the base of the Rocky Mountains and even in Queen Charlotte's 

 islands; but the Bpeciea are not numerous, and for the most part those now 

 indigenous to the boreal regions of America, while their state of preservation 

 is usually very imperfect. 



A- might be expected, vegetable remain.- in the Pleistocene an' not con- 

 fined to Canada, but occur very extensively in the United States. Whittle- 



. Worth en, Andrews, Orton, Newberry, and others have referred to 

 deposits of this kind in Illinois, Indiana. < )hio. and Minnesota : and in the 

 "Proceedings of the American Association" for 1875 Professor N. II. 

 Winchell has Bummed up what was known up to that date, and has noticed 

 more than fifty localities of the " forest beds," as these accumulations are 

 called. Professor Worthen has recognized two distinct forest bed- in Illinois, 



One immediately below the loeSB, the other under till or true bowlder clay. 



The latter he says extends over nearly the whole of central and southern 

 Illinois. Though I have had specimens kindly sent to me by Professor 

 Worthen, Dr. Andrews, and others,] do not propose to enter into any details 

 on these deposits in the United State-, but merely to referto their extension 

 from Canada to the southward as important in a geological sen 



VI, 1871, p. 11 t Montreal, i 



