314 DAWSON ami PENHALLOW — PLEISTOCENE FLORA. 



these deposits occur al different levels in the East and in the West ; (2) that 

 the lower howltler clay belongs more especially to the lower levels in the 

 several localities, while the howhlers of the second bowlder period have been 

 carried to higher points; (3) that there is evidence in the interglacial period 

 of the local prevalence of sea and land, of lakes, bogs, and dry ground ; (4) 

 that these several conditions may in the course of elevation and subsidence 

 have migrated from one level to another, and (5) that while there is thus 

 a general correspondence, there may have been some local diversity of date 

 and transference of certain conditions of deposit from one locality to another 

 according to the progress of subsidence or elevation. 



This is so well illustrated by the observations of Captain Fielden in 

 Grinnell Land, that I quote a part of his statements on the subject, as 

 probably illustrative of the condition of Canada in the Pleistocene period.* 



" In Grinnell Land, from lat. 81° 40' N. to hit. 83° G' N\, no glaciers descend to 

 the sea, no ice-c:tp buries the land ; valleys from which the snow is in a great measure 

 thawed during July and part of August Stretch inland for many miles, and the peaked 

 mountains, snow-clad during the greater portion of the year, in July and August have 

 great portions of their flanks, which rise to an altitude of 2,000 feet, bared of snow. 



"The opposite coast of Greenland presents a very different aspect. A mer-de-glace 

 stretches over nearly its entire surface; its fiords are the outlets by which its great 

 glaciers protrude into the sea. In Petermann Fiord the ice-cap, with its blue jagged 

 edge lying Hush with the face of the lofty cliffs, was estimated to be forty feet thick. 



' ; When we turn to the flora and fauna of Grinnell Land the difference is equally 

 astonishing; some flfty or sixty flowering plants are found in its valley-, and between 

 latitudes 82° and 83° N. I have seen tracts of land so profusely decked with the 

 blossoms of Saxifraga opporitifolia that the purple glow of our heath-clad moors was 

 brought to my recollection. 



;i .Musk oxen in considerable numbers frequent its shores ; the Arctic fox, the wolf, 

 and ermine, with thousands of lemmings, live and die there. The bones of thesn 

 mammals, along with those of the ringed seal (Phoea hispida), are now being 



deposited ii nsiderable quantities in the fluvio-marine beds now forming in the baj - 



and at the outlets of all the streams, or rather summer torrents of Grinnell Land. 

 With these bonea will !»■ associated those of birds, such a- geese ami Bea-gulls. 

 Numerous mollusca and Crustacea, many species of rhizopods, with the remain- of 

 land and sea plant-, will there And a resting place. 



"Supposing that these beds were examined at Bomo future period under conditions 

 when the glacial epoch had disappeared from tie- surrounding area, it would i„. difficult 

 to realize that they were contemporaneous with the bed- formed under the Greenland 

 ice-cap in the Bame parallel of latitude and on the opposite shore of a channel nol 

 twenty mile- across. 



■■ In tin' on. ormouB thicknesses of till with ice-Bcratched stonea have in all 



probability been deposited ; in the other, fluvio-marine bed- containing a compara- 

 tively rich assemblage Of marine ami land form-, with river-rolled pebbles, would be 

 brought t<» light." 



Ilnga Royal Dublin Society, 1878; .-'■■■ also, Quart. Jour. Qeol. Soc, vol, p 566 



