No. 2.] DAWSON — POST PLIOCENE. 183 



expedition soon to be published by Dr. Petermann, will go far to re- 

 move the prevailing error as to Greenland being covered with a 

 universal glacier ; whereas it seems to be a rocky and mostly 

 snow-clad country, wath very large glaciers in its valleys. 



The strikes of the gneiss on the opposite sides of the Saguenay 

 indicate that it occupies a line of transverse fracture, constituting 

 a weak portion of the Laurentian ridges, and this has evidently 

 been smoothed and deepened by water and ice under conditions 

 different from the present, in which it is probable that the chan- 

 nel is being gradually filled with mud. Its excavation must have 

 taken place before the deposition of the thick beds of marine 

 clay (Leda clay) which appear near its mouth and in its tribu- 

 taries, sometimes passing into Boulder-clay below, and capped by 

 sand and gravel. It is indeed not improbable that in the later 

 Post-pliocene it was in great part filled up with such deposits, 

 which have been swept away in the course of the re-elevation of 

 the land. 



At Tadoussac, at the mouth of the Saguenay, where the under- 

 lying formation is the Laurentian gneiss, the Post-pliocene beds 

 attain to great thickness, but are of simple structure and slightly 

 fossiliferous. The principal part is a stratified sandy clay with 

 few boulders, except in places near the ridges of Laurentian rocks, 

 when it becomes filled with numerous rounded blocks and pebbles 

 of gneiss. This forms high banks eastward of Tadoussac. It 

 contains a few shells of Tellina Grcenlandica and Leda trnncata, 

 and a little inland, at Bergeron River, it also contains Cardium 

 Islaiidicum, Astarte dliptica, and Rhynclionella psittacea. It 

 resembles some of the beds seen on the South side of the river St. 

 Lawrence, and has also much of the aspect of the Leda clay, as 

 developed in the valley of the Ottawa. On this clay there rest 

 in places thick beds of yellow sand and gravel. 



At Tadoussac these deposits have been cut into a succession of 

 terraces which are well seen near the hotel and old church. The 

 lowest, near the shore, is about ten feet high ; the second, on 

 which the hotel stands, is forty feet; the third is 120 to 150 feet 

 in height, and is uneven at top. The highest, which consists of 

 sand and gravel, is about 250 feet in height. Above this the 

 country inland consists of bare Laurentian rocks. These terraces 

 have been cut out of deposits, once more extensive, in the process 

 of elevation of the land ; and the present flats off the mouth of the 

 Saguenay, would form a similar terrace as wide as any of the 

 others, if the country were to experience another elevatory move- 



