Mesozoic and Cccnozoic Geology and Palaeontology. 281 



with difficulty that any two sets are found exactly agreeing in their 

 course, though as in Maine they conform to the direction of the valleys. 

 The greater part of Massachusetts and Connecticut is covered with the 

 drift sand, gravel, bowlders or clay, and the grooves, furrows and 

 scratches upon the surface of the rocks in place, have a general south- 

 erly direction, though var3'ing with the contour of the valle3^s to a 

 southeasterly or southwesterly course. At the Island of New York, 

 there is abundant evidence that a current swept over it from the north- 

 west to the southeast. The furrows are most strongly marked on the 

 northwestern slopes of the hills, and least so oh the southeastern. In 

 many instances they are very distinct on the western and northwestern 

 slopes, extending to the highest points of the rock, but no traces are to 

 be seen on the eastern and southeastern slopes, although both slopes 

 are equally exposed. The strise are most numerous in the middle part 

 of the island, somewhat less in the western, and least in the eastern. 

 It appears that the current was deflected southward by some force, at 

 an angle to its course in the middle part of the island. Throughout 

 all this region south of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the St. Lawrence 

 valley, we have in the course of the strige, and the distribution of clay, 

 sand, gravel, and bowlders, the evidence of an overflow of the whole 

 country, except the higher hills and mountains, and the evidence that 

 this overflow was by subsidence of the coast, and that the Arctic cur- 

 rent, instead of leaving the coast on approaching the mouth of the 

 Gulf, as it does now, flowed into the Gulf and across the depressed 

 New England area, transporting its fields of ice, which grounded upon 

 the northern slopes of hills and mountains, and rubbed the rocks in 

 the valleys and plains wherever the surface soil and subserial accumu- 

 lations were swept off by the grinding weight of a mass driven by a 

 current through water too shallow to float it. However, the evidence 

 of submergence does not rest alone upon these appearances, but stands 

 upon the incontestible ground of palaeontology. 



Throughout nearly all this region the striated rocks are succeeded 

 by fossiliferous, bowlder-bearing, marine clays and sands. In the 

 Gaspe peninsula ocean terraces and stratified clay containing marine 

 testacea occur at the height of 600 feet above the sea. In the St. 

 Lawrence valley, the valley of the Ottawa, Champlain region of 

 Vermont, and over the triangular area of 9,000 square miles extending 

 from Ottawa to Lake Champlain, the marine fossils occur in the 

 bowlder clay at all elevations as high as 500 feet or more above the 

 level of the ocean. The fossiliferous marine clays and sands form a 



