34 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



side, a few small foreign boulders were encountered, chiefly granite 

 and gneiss, a striated stone was seen, and a number of smoothed and 

 polished pebbles looked glacial. 



On a journey toward the northwest end of the island, near 

 Northam, Ellerslie and Richmond, many granite boulders, some 

 six feet in diameter, were seen; and at O'Leary there were gneisses 

 and a large block of coarse conglomerate, suggesting a tillite, much 

 like the Devonian boulder conglomerates of the southern siàe 

 of Gaspé. An excursion from O'Leary to Pitt Island, on the sea to 

 the northeast, disclosed red brown till with many Archaean-looking 

 stones, especially greenstones and granites. The conclusion was 

 reached that ice from New Brunswick and Gaspé had covered at 

 least the lower lands of northwestern Prince Edward Island. 



East of Emerald Junction, near the centre of the island, the 

 country grows hilly, the railway reaching 311 feet at North Wiltshire 

 station, and the red sandstone comes close to the surface with no hint 

 of iCe smoothing or of boulder clay, so that one would suppose the 

 country to be unglaciated. At Souris, near the east end of the island, 

 however, there is sandy till in a railway cutting close to the harbour, 

 15 or 20 feet in thickness and enclosing plenty of striated stones. In 

 this section only local sandstones were found, but there are a few 

 granite boulders in the fields nearby, one having diameters of 2 feet 

 9 inches, by 1 foot 9 inches. There are also smaller boulders of 

 quartzite which must have come from a distance. As these foreign 

 stones were found only at the lower levels they may have been carried 

 by floating ice, since they seem not to occur in the till. 



Three or four miles northwest of Souris on the road toward 

 Gowan Brae, a surface of sandstone is smoothed, and well striated, 

 in the direction 15° west of north, but whether the ice advanced from 

 the north or the south was uncertain. 



The results of the fieldwork done corroborate the conclusions 

 reached by Chalmers^ that only the northwest end of the island was 

 actually overridden by an ice sheet coming from New Brunswick or 

 Gaspé; that the rest of the island, especially the central part, was 

 only very lightly touched by ice, if ever completely covered; that the 

 till toward the east end contains only local materials ; and that floating 

 ice has distributed foreign boulders over the lower parts of the island. 



Chalmers states that marine terraces reach about 75 feet above 

 I)resent sea level. They are by no means striking as compared with 

 the impressive cliffs and widespread sand bars of the modern shore. 



1 Ibid., p. 70. M. 



