18 THE MODERN PERIOD. 



muddy bottom tend to the long form, while those in more salt water 

 and on hacd bottom are round. 



Sand-Hills or Dimes of Prince Edward Island. — These mounds of 

 drifted sand are extensively developed along the outer or north-west 

 shore, where they stretch in long lines across the bays and parallel to 

 the coast. In all they extend in length about 45 miles, and are some- 

 times more than 40 feet high. Though usually held together by the 

 roots of coarse grasses, they are liable to frequent changes, which are 

 much promoted by the cropping of the grass by the cattle, or by any 

 artificial or accidental breaking of the surface. At St Peter's I saw an 

 old entrance, used in the early French times, quite filled up with the 

 blown sand ; and I was told that a hill, 40 feet high, had been removed 

 within a few years, and had disclosed the remains of an old black- 

 smith's forge under its base. The sand in these hills is derived from 

 the waste of the red sandstones ; and, when left dry by the tide, is 

 blown up by the wind. The attrition to which it has been subjected 

 has removed the coating of red oxide of iron from the siliceous grains 

 of sand, so that, though derived from red rocks, these sands are nearly 

 white. Where the sand-hills run along the coast, a long narrow 

 channel often occurs between them and the shore, and they often 

 block up streams, forming lagoons, in which deposits very different 

 from those of the open gulf are produced. 



Shore Ridges in Prince Edward Island. — Mr Pope kindly pointed 

 out to me, on a creek near Grand River and on Ives Creek, the 

 mounds known locally as " shooting dykes," in allusion to their use 

 by sportsmen as a shelter in duck-shooting. These are somewhat 

 regular banks or dykes of soil fringing the creeks, and having almost 

 the appearance of artificial earthworks, which they have indeed been 

 supposed to be. Some of them are 6 feet in height and 10 feet wide at 

 base. I believe them to be of the same nature with the Lake Ridges 

 of Nova Scotia described in Chapter III., p. 35, and that they have 

 been produced by the expansion or driftage of the ice which forms in 

 the creeks in winter. They constitute a sort of " moraine " deposit, 

 which, on a larger scale and in a more hilly country, might readily 

 be mistaken for the work of glaciers. Those that we saw were en- 

 tirely composed of soil intermixed with vegetable matter. Some of 

 them showed evidence of formation by successive increments of 

 material. Their steepest sides were next the land, and they were 

 highest opposite the most exposed and widest portions of the creeks. 



Micmac Remains. — Since the publication of Acadian Geology, 

 some attention has been given by Dr Gilpin, Mr Gossip, Dr Patter- 

 son, and others to the prehistoric antiquities of Nova Scotia, and 



