300 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Aug. 



existence, without doubt, in Arctic West America and Arctic East 

 America. The name of the plant has occasionally appeared in 

 Canadian lists, but I have as yet seen no Canadian specimen. 

 It remains for Canadian or Hudson Bay botanists to trace its south- 

 ern limit on the American Continent. In Europe and Asia it has 

 no tendency to Arctic limitation. — From the Edinburgh New 

 PhUosoj)hical Journal. 



OBSERVATIONS ON SUPPOSED GLACIAL DBIFT IN 

 THE LABRADOR PENINSULA, &c. 



By Heniiy Youle Hind, M.A., F.R.G.S. 

 [The most important part of this paper is that which relates to 

 the Labrador Peninsula, which we copy entire : — Eds.] 



During an exploration of a part of the interior of the Labrador 

 Peninsula in 1861, I had an opportunity of observing the extraor- 

 dinary number, magnitude, and distribution of the erratics in the 

 valley of the Moisie River and some of its tributaries, as far north 

 as the south edge of the table-land of the Labrador Peninsula (lat. 

 50° 50' N., longo 6G° W.), and about 110 miles due north of 

 the Grulf of St. Lawrence. Boulders of lar^'e dimensions, ten to 

 twenty feet in diameter, began to be numerous at the Mountain 

 Portage, 1460 feet above the sea, and sixty miles in an air-line 

 from the mouth of the Moisie River. They were perched upon 

 the summits of peaks estimated to be 1500 feet above the point of 

 view, or nearly 3000 feet above the sea-level, and were observed 

 to occupy the edges of cliffs, to be scattered over the slopes of 

 mountain-ranges, and to be massed in great numbers in the 

 intervening valleys. 



At the " Burnt Portage," on the north-east brcUich of the Moisie, 

 nearly 100 miles in an air-line from the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 

 and 1850 feet above the ocean, the low gneissoid hills for many 

 miles around were seen to be strewed with erratics wherever a lodg- 

 ment for them could be found. The valleys (one to two miles 

 broad) were not only floored with them, but they lay there in tiers, 

 three or more deep. Close to the banks of the rivers and lakes 

 near the " Burnt Portage," where the mosses and lichens have 

 been destroyed by fire, very coarse sand conceals the rocks beneath ; 

 but on ascending an eminence away from the immediate banks of 

 the river, the true character of the country becomes apparent. At 

 the base of the gneissoid hills which limit the valley of the east 



