396 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. viii. 



which lie in all positions. These beds, however, seem to form a 

 part of the general series, and do not appertain specially to any 

 particular horizon. No clearly glaciated stones ware seen, though 

 from the shape and appearance of many, it is probable that a 

 careful search would bring such to light, as at Victoria. Fine 

 exposures of drift also occur at Port Townsend near the entrance 

 to the Sound, and elsewhere along its banks. 



The drift deposits of Puget Sound, as a whole, very much 

 resemble those of the southern part of Vancouver Island and 

 shores of the Strait of Georgia further north, which are described 

 in the paper above referred to. There is good evidence to show 

 that at one time a great glacier-sheet, fed both from the main- 

 land and mountains of Vancouver Island, filled the whole Strait 

 of Georgia, and passing southward, overlapped the low south- 

 eastern corner, at least, of Vancouver Island. It would also 

 appear that when this glacier began to retreat, the sea was at a 

 level considerably higher than at present, and that as soon as the 

 heavily-glaciated rocks of the lowlands were uncovered, the drift 

 deposits — boulder clays, gravels and sands — were laid down on 

 them. These are found in some places near Victoria to include 

 marine shells. From a careful examination of the south-eastern 

 corner of Vancouver Island, my impression is that its glaciation 

 though heavy, was not long continued, and it is probable that 

 in this case the front of the glacier did not at any time reach 

 far southward into the low country of the Sound, or westward 

 along the Strait of Fuca. Be this as it may, however, it is 

 pretty evident that during the submergence above referred to, 

 the great valley, including the Sound, and country to the south, 

 of which the drift deposits have just been described, was a wide 

 strait ; along the margins of which local glaciers may have dis- 

 charged in some places, and in which sea currents, aided by 

 debris-bearing icebergs and coast-ice piled up the deposits now 

 found. It is probable that the same sheet of water passed yet 

 further southward, forming the Willamette Sound, of Condon, with 

 a wide opening to the open ocean by the valley of the Columbia 

 River. If the Strait of Fuca was not at this time encumbered 

 by glacier ice, the high Olympic mountains of the north-western 

 corner of Washington Territory must have formed a snowy sea. 

 washed island. 



No great mass of glacier ice can have excavated the present 

 channels and water-ways of Puget Sound, as a glance at their 



