128 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol, 



IX. 



associated those of birds, such as geese and sea-oulis. Numerous 

 mollusca and Crustacea, many species of rhizopods, with the re- 

 mains of hind and sea phants, will there find a resting;; place. 



Supposing- that these beds were examined at some future period 

 under conditioQS, when the glacial epoch had disappeared from 

 the sourrouuding area, it would be difficult to realise that they 

 were contemporaneous with the beds formed under the Green- 

 land ice cape in the same parallel of latitude and on the opposite 

 shore of a channel not twenty miles across. 



In the one case, enormous thicknesses of till with ice-scratched 

 stones have in all probability been deposited ; in the other, fluvio- 

 marine beds containing a comparatively rich assemblage of marine 

 and land forms, with river rolled pebbles, would be brought to 

 light. 



In the face of these facts is it incredible to suppose that the 

 inter- glacial periods of Great Britain are due not so much to 

 ''oscillations of temperature" as to alterations in the amount of 

 moisture in the atmosphere, and the position of the land-mass re- 

 garded as a condenser ? 



It is evident that the glaciatiou of Greenland and the w^est 

 shore of Baffin's Bay and Ellesmere Land is not a result al- 

 together of degrees of heat and cold, or in other words, temperature,, 

 but equally the result of geographical position which causes these 

 regions to act as mighty condensers, throwing down in the form 

 of snow the heated vapour of the south, and so effectually 

 eliminating the moisture from the air that a tract of country 

 like Grinuell Land lying still further to the north and subjected 

 to an equally rigorous climate, is comparatively exempt from 

 glaciation. — From tht Scientific Proceedings of the Royal 

 Dublin Society. 



The Rocky Mountain Locust. — At its last session Congress 

 appropriated §10,000 for the completion of the investigation of 

 the Rocky Mountain locust by the United States Entomological 

 Commission. The work during the coming season will be carried 

 on in Colorado and the Western Territories, particularly Utah 

 and Eastern Idaho, where the locust abounds each summer, doing 

 more or less damage. Parties will also be sent into Montana, 

 the main breeding place of the destructive swarms periodically 

 visiting the Western Mississippi States. — American Naturalisty 

 May, 1879. 



(Published June 23, 1879.) 



