84 GLACIAL GEOLOGY OF NOVA SCOTIA—HONEYMAN. 
glaciers, as now, in the extreme Arctic regions. Yet I think that 
most of the alleged instances must be founded on error, and that 
old sea-beaches have been mistaken for moraines. I have failed 
to find in our higher mountains any distinct sign of glacier 
action, though the action of the ocean breakers is visible almost to 
their summits ; and though I have observed in Canada and Nova 
Scotia many old sea-beaches, gravel-ridges, and lake-margins, I 
have seen nothing that could fairly be regarded as the work of 
glaciers. The so-called moraines, in so far as my observation 
extends, are more probably shingle beaches and bars, old coast 
lines loaded with boulders, trains of boulders or ‘ozars. Most 
of them convey to my mind the impression of ice action along a 
slowly subsiding coast, forming successive deposits of stones in the 
shallow water, and burying them in clay and smaller stones as 
the depth increased. These deposits were again modified during 
emergence, when the old ridges were sometimes bared by denu- 
dation, and new ones heaped up.” 
Mr. Belt observes, Transactions of Institute, N. 8., Vol. L, 
Part IV., 1866: “ Local character of drift—Having thus sketched 
out the probable action of the ice, during its advance, culmination 
and retreat, and explained the general distribution of the drift, 
it only remains to apply the theory to a few of its more striking 
features. The local character of most of the drift stones in Nova 
Scotia is one of these. Here and there a few blocks of granite are 
found that have been brought two, four, or even eight miles, but 
the great majority of fragments belong to the rock formation over 
which they lie. Boulders of slate occur where bands of slate cross 
the country, and boulders of quartzite where the bed rock is quart- 
zite. Fragments of quartz, sometimes containing gold, are easily 
traced to the lodes (invariably to the north of them) from which 
they have been detached,and thus many auriferous lodes have been 
discovered. The local character of the stones in the drift is 
opposed to the supposition that to the north the land was so 
elevated that the ice moved over the country likea great glacier, 
and isin favor of the theory that it was formed by the retreat- 
ing margin of a great accumulation of ice. If there had been 
during the glacial period high mountains to the north of Nova 
