Mesozoic and Ccenozoic Geology and Palai07itology. 279 



an inhabitant of this continent during part or all of the Post-pliocene 

 period, no reasonable man will doubt, for his bones and his stone imple- 

 ments have frequently been found inthe Ashle}' beds of South Carolina, 

 with the remains of the extinct Mastodon and Mammoth, and living 

 mammals that are well known to have been contemporaneous. This mix- 

 ture of the bones and implements of man, with the remains of living and 

 extinct mammals, is also well known frora the labors of Prof. Whitney, 

 in California. 



Sometime during the Pliocene or Post-pliocene era, and, most like- 

 ly, commencing during the first and continuing into the second, a 

 portion of the nortlieastern coast, about Hudson's Bay, and the Gulf 

 of St. Lawrence, and that arm of land south of the Gulf, and east of 

 Lake Champlain and the Hudson river, known as New Brunswick and 

 the New England States, was submerged or overflowed by ocean 

 currents, with the exception of a few mountain elevations. The de- 

 pression in the Hudson Bay region has been fully set forth in the fore- 

 going pages. It appears that the rocks are striated in nearly all 

 directions, and that upon the striated surface there rest marine clays 

 full of fossils belonging to the living species of that region, and 

 numerous bowlders from the contiguous mountains and hills. The 

 scratches are evidently the work of floating icebergs and shore ice, 

 during the period of submergence. There is no general radiation of 

 detritus from mountain ranges to evidence the existence of glaciei's in 

 this region, nor any other evidence tending to show that the climate 

 was materially diff'erent from what it is now. The fossiliferous marine 

 clays and sands prove the submergence, and all other phenomena, in- 

 cluding the scratches, follow as the necessary results of submergence, 

 in that latitude, without the intervention of glaciers; and, furthermore, 

 there is nothing to warrant the supposition of a glacial period within 

 this area. And as the Laurentian range of mountains is south and 

 east of this submerged area, and rises to the height, in some places, of 

 3,000 to 4,000 feet, and generally' has an elevation of 1,500 feet or 

 more above the level of the ocean, no reasonable theorist will claim 

 that a glacier would ascend this range of mountains for the mere pur- 

 pose of going south, and j'et how could we have a continental sheet of 

 ice moving south unless it did. Modern ice has a tendency to move 

 down an incline, i-ather than to ascend rugged elevations and moun- 

 tain chains, and an ordinary philosopher would suggest, that if we 

 must have a Post-pliocene glacier, on the northern side of the Lauren- 

 tian mountains, that we let it slip down hill instead of up, even if the 



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