294 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. X. 



changes of climate," arising primarily from the eccentricity of 

 the earth's orbit, as proposed by Mr. James Croll and accepted 

 by Mr. James Geikie in the two admirable works, " Climate and 

 Time" and "Great Ice Age," seems the most feasible; and to 

 those works I refer any enquiring readers. With regard to the 

 Ice Age of Scotland and north of England Mr, Geike makes out 

 a much better case than our American glacial friends. It must 

 be remembered that Scotland is in the lattitude of from the mid- 

 dle to the northern part of Labrador, and were the Gulf Stream 

 to change its course, and with a little increase in quantity of 

 precipitation and fog, to-day, it would again become a glacial 

 reo'ion. The drift which occurs in the lake regions of America 

 resembles more nearly that of central Europe than that of Scot- 

 land and Scandinavia, where the evidences of glacial action are 

 more apparent than on the continent. At the present time only 

 glaciers in the far north discharge icebergs into the sea, yet these 

 are driven farther southward than the extreme limit of southern 

 drift in America. It must be remembered that these bero;s come 

 from a latitude not much farther north than the Scottish islands. 

 Therefore, the American reader must not be unintentionally 

 led astray. On this continent there are but few writers who are 

 unbiassed, and it is somewhat uncommon for a student to meet 

 with a judicial production as geology has not yet produced the 

 great mind who has been able to decipher all the valuable hiero- 

 gliphics of surface geology on this continent. A portion of the 

 partizan writings is unavoidable but very many more are unwor- 

 thy productions of the servile obedience to the memory of the 

 distinguished founders of the glacial theory, who never exacted 

 the homage bestowed by some of theii* disciples, attributing to 

 fflaciers any sort of features whose orii>in is somewhat obscure. 



IX. — TERRACES AND BEACHES. 



Overlying the " Brown clays," or where these are absent, the 

 blue Erie clays, there is a considerable number of terraces and 

 beaches, whose remains are to be seen at the western end of Lake 

 Ontario. Especially is this the case in the Dundas valley ; but 

 even here the majority have been more or less removed by subse- 

 quent denudation, so that at the higher levels there only remains 

 an occasional hill capped with stratified sand or gravel, or small 

 fragments of the isolated beaches skirting the Niagara escarp- 

 ment. 



