104 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. vi. 



colour of the clays is observable. They here vary from a pule fox- 

 colour to a vrarm reddish brown tint. The colour is not derived 

 from the red granite of these hills, for this rock is too hard to have 

 yielded much to the grinding action of glaciers; moreover, the 

 red tint is more pronounced to the east and north of the granite- 

 hills than to the south of them. We must look then to some 

 other cause for the red colour of the surfiice clays in Acadia. So 

 far as New Brunswick is concerned I believe it is due to the 

 destruction of red and chocolate-coloured shales of the Carbonifer- 

 ous System. Such soft rocks as these would yield readily to the 

 erosive action of glaciers, and so might be expected to impart 

 their colour to the detritus swept along with the ice. Strong ocean 

 currents following the direction of the striae could scarcely have 

 hollowed out the low valleys which these shales are now seen to 

 occupy, without sweeping the detritus out to the west as well as 

 to the east of the granite hills. But as I have already stated the 

 western clays are all of a grey colour. Much less will such cur- 

 rents account for the presence of these clays on the tops of the 

 hills in question. If the aid of ice-bergs be invoked to push the 

 debris of a sinking continent up the hill sides, we do not seem 

 nearer a solution of the difiicultv, than if the distribution of the 

 clays were attributed to current alone. Bergs, no doubt, may 

 have carried erratics from the northern hills across the Coal- 

 field to this point, but such an agency seems inadequate to 

 explain the presence of the red clays — replete as they are with 

 countless fragments of slate and sandstone, swept up from valleys 

 800 or 900 feet below — on the summit of these hills. Had 

 ice-bergs, driven southward by the polar current, forced these 

 stones up the northern slopes of the hills dui'ing a period when 

 the land was slowly sinking, one would expect to find the accom" 

 pmying clays sorted out and carried down to lower levels. Such 

 a current, too, must have been powerful enough to drive across 

 these summits bergs, which, on sliding down their southern de- 

 clivities would score the leds-es on that side down to the sea level. 

 Indications of southward drift are encountered at Bald Mountain,^ 

 the highest eminence in the central part of the Southern counties^ 



* Gosiier in his first report on the Grcology of N. B. (1839), page 76,. 

 gives 1 120 feet as the height of this hill. It is at the eastern extremity 

 of a spur of the intrusive granite of Charlotte Covmty, which extends, 

 along the dividing line between King's and Queen's Counties. 



