282 Tertiary. 



coating for a large part of the face of New Brunswick, and sea beaches, 

 sea bottoms, and fossiliferous clays form almost a continuous belt on 

 the coast of Maine, 150 feet above the ocean, and extending up the 

 rivers to the same height. These facts prove the submergence of the 

 country, bej^ond a doubt, to a depth much greater than 600 feet below 

 the present level of the ocean ; because the marine shells must have 

 some depth of water as well as the cla}^, in which to encase them, in 

 order to produce fossilization. Nor would we expect, on account of 

 the ocean currents that swept over the region in question, to find ma- 

 rine remains, except in very deep water, where the shells or bones 

 might receive a covering of drift materials sufficient to preserve them 

 from the disintegrating and denuding agencies which have prevailed, 

 during the long train of centuries that have elapsed since the deposit. 



The nodules at Green's creek are in the lower part of the Leda clay, 

 which contains bowlders, and is succeeded by very large bowlders, 

 while no bowlder clay underlies it. The plants contained in these no- 

 dules are characterized as a selection from the present Canadian flora 

 of some of the more hai'dy species, having the most northern range, and 

 the animals such as ma}^ now be found in the Arctic current and the Gulf 

 of St. Lawrence. It appears, that the Arctic current, that entered by 

 the way of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, backed its waters up the Ottawa 

 valley, and that the plants from the heights of the Laurentian range of 

 mountains, on the border of the valley, found their way into an eddy, 

 where the blue clay was precipitated, and the 3fallotus villosus, mollus- 

 can shells and hardy vegetation were so beautifully coffined in en- 

 during nodules of stone. Dr. Dawson collected and identified from the 

 marine deposits ten species of plants, and 195 species of radiates, mol- 

 luscs, articulates, and vertebrates, and the whole of these, with three or 

 four exceptions, he affirmed to be living northern or Arctic species, be- 

 longing, in the case of the marine species, to moderate depths, or vary- 

 ing from the littoral zone to 200 fathoms. The assemblage is identical 

 with that of the northern part of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Labra- 

 dor coast, at present, and there is nothing in it to indicate any 

 change of climate, beyond that which would necessarily follow, bj' 

 changing the Arctic current, so as to throw it into the gulf and across 

 the New England States. 



There is nothing in all this area that indicates the existence of even 

 a local glacier with any degree of certainty, though it may not be 

 considered impossible that a small glacier should have existed upon 

 the top of some of the highest mountain peaks of New England, when 



