80 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



recently on ice floes, may be questioned. In Greenland fossiliferous beds 

 of Tertiary age have undergone extensive disintegration and are to-dav 

 within the active range of glaciers and shore ice that carry detritus 

 south-ward to be dropped on the melting of the ice. To accept a con- 

 clusion which regards Tertiar}- fossils obtained on the Fishing banks as- 

 derived from local beds of that age necessitates the absence of terminal 

 moraine material which, however thin, would prevent the fishing lines 

 from reaching and bringing specimens to the surface. 



Assumptions have already been quoted that the shore deposits are 

 the remains of the terminal moraine of the glacial flows in the Pleis- 

 tocene period, but consideration makes it doubtful if the deposits so ex- 

 posed are of that character, in extent they do not compare with those 

 to the west of the Bay of Fundy and are no more extensive than some 

 of the dnimline mounds occurring inland; for instance some in Pictou 

 county were proved to be over 80 feet in thickness, and by the Miramichi 

 river the explorations for the Chatham water-works showed gullies lead- 

 ing into that stream to be filled with boulder clay to the depth of 100 

 feet below the present water level. 



The proposition is submitted that instead of the ice front stopping 

 at the shore it was pushed forward on the terrace in range with Sambro 

 bank and deposited much of its load seaward and even to the edge of the 

 shelf and in proof of this attention is directed to the deep holes of cir- 

 cumscribed area that the soundings disclose and which remind one 

 strongly of the kettle holes of moraines. Then, again from the sands 

 of Sable Island the seas sort out on the beaches the fine grains of black 

 ores of iron and red garnets identical with similar deposits on the shore 

 of Lake Ontario that are contained in the glacial drift from off the 

 j^zoic rocks to the northward. The Sable Island deposit it is contended 

 had a simlar origin and necessarily from the nearest source the moun- 

 tains of Labrador. 



It is inconceivable that ocean currents could have carved out a sea 

 bottom of the complexit}' of contour here developed. In shallow waters 

 the ebb and fiow of tides may show a tendency to make channels, but 

 the usual effect is to level down and round over mounds and inequalities 

 of deposition. Then as to icebergs of large dimensions being the vehicle, 

 none are known to come near to Sable Island to be stranded and to fur- 

 row out depressions even if they could reasonably be regarded as the 

 possible graving tools of the sea bottom. 



In a consideration of this kind we are hampered by inability to see 

 the deposits in place, to dig into and find the composition and thickness 

 of the various deposits and to separate those that are superficial and to 

 which accretions are now making from the older sediments resting on a 



