668 SUMMARY OP THE HISTORY. 



finally disappeared before the advent of the Micmac and Mali- 

 seet ? We know not ; but in so far as negative evidence is entitled 

 to weight, we may suppose that they had ; and that the human occu- 

 pation of Acadia may not be of older date than the origin of the his- 

 toric nations of the old world. The Red man still survives, with the 

 remnant of the wild animals which fed his forefathers, and of the 

 forests which sheltered them ; but now the towns and cities of 

 civilized man grow up on the borders of our rivers and bays, his fields 

 spread over the land, his sails dot the surface of the waters, his mines 

 penetrate the deeply hidden stores of subterranean wealth, while his 

 ever active mind studies with penetrating insight the monuments of 

 that strange series of creative processes by which in the counsels of 

 Almighty wisdom its present destiny was worked out. What next ? 

 Geology cannot answer the question ; and the geologist, as he lays 

 down his hammer and his pen, can only utter the prayer that in the 

 future history of this old world, in whatever of new development and 

 higher glory its Maker may have in store for it, Acadia and its sons 

 and daughters may bear a worthy and a happy part. 



Conclusion. 



In the preceding pages, I have neither sought nor avoided the 

 discussion of those questions on which geologists are at present 

 divided in opinion, in so far as these questions are raised by the 

 history of the formations developed in the Acadian Provinces. I 

 have, however, made such discussions subordinate to the statement 

 of the facts immediately under consideration ; and, for this reason, 

 they will be found scattered in various places throughout the work. 

 I may now shortly sum up my conclusions with reference to a few 

 of the more important of these disputed points. 



The hard-fought field of glacial denudation, striation, and boulder 

 drift, I have traversed in the Chapter on the Post-pliocene, and have 

 endeavoured to show that the phenomena of the boulder clay and drift 

 in Eastern America are to be accounted for not by a universal glacier ; 

 but by local glaciers, drift ice, and the agency of cold northern cur- 

 rents, in transporting materials and eroding the surface of a partially 

 submerged continent. 



On the modern notion of "homotaxis," as distinguished from actual 

 contemporaneity of formations on the same geological horizons, I have 

 fully stated my views in introducing the history of the Carboniferous 

 period, and have shown reason for believing that the formations of 

 this great period in America are exactly, and even in their sub- 

 divisions, synchronous with those known by the same names in Europe. 



