April 3, 1S70.J ■^^•^'^ [Price, 



of the continent took place. During this, the duys, sand, and gravel were 

 deposited; floated doton by icebergs from the Canadian highlands, with 

 blocks of granite, greenstone, slates. See p. 7. Yet "the glacier" is 

 credited with having carried large blocks of lime and sandstones "one 

 liundred miles or more southwest to points several hundred feet above their 

 place of origin," from the north or islands within Lake Erie. p. 29. In 

 view of all the circumstances it would seem more natural to infer that 

 these large stones were transported by floating ice-rafts and deposited on 

 ground that was afterwards elevated, as it often was by an interior force. 



Again, Dr. Newberry says : " At the commencement of this ice period 

 this continent must have stood several hundred feet higher than now." 2 

 Ohio Geo. Rep. 6. That the first product in Ohio of the ice period, was 

 the boulder clay. And that in New England and other countries where, 

 granite and other silicious matamorphic rocks abound, the product of gla- 

 cial erosion is sand, gravel, and boulders. As the great ice sheet retreated 

 northward it thrust out and left behind it a succession of heaps of boulder 

 clay which now form a nearly continuous sheet over the glaciated surface," 

 lb. These quotations present some difficulties. If the continent was seve- 

 ral hundred feet higher at the commencement of the ice period than now. 

 so much greater would have been the difficulty for ice to come liitlier from 

 the Pole by land ; whereas if it was then under water, as under the next 

 coming drift period, such a rise was unnecessary to account for the Till 

 which might be the product of floating ice ; that would also dispense with 

 Mr. Winchell's mountain at the Pole to make an incline for the ice to come 

 down by gravity. And, again, it is not perceived how a northwardly re- 

 treating ice-sheet, that is, retreating only because and as it melted, could 

 have thrust out and left behind it the boulder clay, bearing all the evi- 

 dences of having been spread out and deposited under the action of per- 

 vasive waters. Indeed, Dr. Newberry seems to have raised the continent 

 once oftener than necessary, if the boulder clay could have been deposited 

 under the sea as he admits the drift and many boulders were. 



Now, seeing from all the testimony cited, that Canada and all directly to 

 the north, was under the ocean; New England also, except the highest tops 

 of the mountains ; and the great Mississippi Valley was also an extension 

 of the Gulf of Mexico ; that there were no great Mountains northwards of 

 Canada, nor in Canada, but an ocean current bore thence southward divid- 

 ing southeastward over New England, and westward and southwestward 

 over the country lying between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies, 

 what is so likely to have been the source of the Till, the boulders, the drift, 

 and rock groovings as the northern ice borne upon the northern oceanic 

 currents? There may have been icebergs broken from Arctic Mountain 

 glaciers, and other ice formations ; all floating as ice rafts, thick and of ir- 

 resistible momentum, grinding upon ridges j^et under water and canning 

 their materials southward. 



In view of the preceding facts it seems sufficing to say, that when New 

 England, the Hudson and Champlain Valleys, Canada and the British 



