286 ABSTRACTS 1882-83. 
from half a mile to several miles from the shore. The open portion of the bay is full of 
loose ice, often packed very closely by the action of easterly winds. In March and April 
the marginal sheets break up into floes and drift up and down the bay, and are often re- 
inforced by large fields of ice from the gulf without. These sheets of ice grind over the 
reefs and impinge on the shores with great force, and evidently exert a great erosive and 
transporting power. In the later part of the pleistocene period, when the land stood at a 
lower level, and the climate was probably eolder, their action may have been still more 
powerful. This action of floating ice is similar to that which has been pointed out by — 
Admiral Bayfield in the river St. Lawrence, and by Dr. Dawson on the coast of Nova — 
Scotia ; but Mr. Chalmers believes that it has had a somewhat exceptional influence on 
the south side of the Baie des Chaleurs, which renders its study there unusually instruct- 
ive, as illustrating the agency of coast ice in the erosion of the surface of the land. 

IV.— On the Inferior Mazilla of Phoca Grœnlandica, from Green’s Oreek, Gloucester, 
Russell, Co., Ontario.—By Dr. J. A. GRANT. 
(Read May 26, 1883.) 
The author exhibited a very interesting and perfect specimen of the inferior maxilla 
of a small seal, Phoca Grenlandica, found in a calcareous nodule from the glacial-clay 
deposits cut through by Green’s Creek, a tributary of the Ottawa River, nine miles below 
Ottawa city. The geology of these post-tertiary deposits is fully described in the Geology of 
Canada, 1863, Chap. XXII., where their fossils contents are enumerated. These include re- 
mains of whale, seal, morse, birds and fishes ; also a large number of marine, freshwater and 
land invertebrata, as well as plants. Marine fossils have not been found at more than 410 
feet above the sea, those of Green’s Creek being about 118 feet ; while the limit of elevation 
at which these stratified deposits have been observed is about 500 feet. 

