Glacial Phenomena of Canada. 333 



Birdseye and Trenton limestones and the Oneida conglomerate, — 

 highly disturbed, cleaved, and partly metamorphosed and foliated. 

 The contours of the hills indicate the moulding effects of ice. The 

 rounded surfaces, wherever they have not been too long exposed 

 to the weather, are grooved and scratched ; and these well-defined 

 indications are found alike on the sides and the summits of the 

 hills. In company with Mr. Hall and Sir Win. Logan, I ascend- 

 ed the Canaan Hills from the N. W., descended into the opposite 

 valley, crossed the Richmond Hills above the Shakers' Village, 

 and, descending into the Richmond Valley, walked to Pittsfield. 

 It is a remarkable circumstance, recorded by Dr. Hitchcock, and 

 partly confirmed by Sir Charles Lyell, and which I also saw, that 

 on both slopes the observed striations run, more or less, across 

 the trend of the hills, which at this point strike about N.N.W. 

 The directions of the striae are between E. 10 o S. and S.E. ; a 

 larger proportion approaching the first than the second direction. 

 Why they should run across the hills and valleys at all has not 

 yet been explained ; for while quite admitting the value of Mr. 

 Darwin's explanation *, it yet does not appear to me to meet a 

 case where the hills are so steep and the valleys so very deep. 

 The difficulty is increased by the fact that the average strike of 

 mountain and valley is from N. to S., which is also the general 

 direction of glacial striations over most of North America ; and it 

 is difficult to understand why, if floating ice produced these 

 marks, an exception should have been made in this case, where 

 we might expect the N. and S. run of the submerged valleys 

 would have acted as guides to the icebergs, which would then 

 have floated from north to south as they did in the adjacent 

 valley of the Hudson. The drift is often 40 feet thick and up- 

 wards, and is mostly local, many of the boulders being of the 

 Birdseye limestone, which crops out in the valleys. Smaller 

 drift, with these boulders, creeps up the flanks of the hills almost 

 to their summits, — this effect, as stated by Sir Charles Lyell f, 

 having probably been produced in the manner indicated by Mr. 

 Darwin, who, in a similar instance, considers boulders to have 

 been floated up on the ice of successive winters, by little and little 

 during a slow submergence of the country J. 



• Phil. Mag. August 1855. 



f Proceedings of the Royal Institution, vol. ii. p. 95. 

 X If before the submergence of the country the cold were sufficiently 

 intense, it is possible that each minor range forming the sides of valleys 



