370 THE GREAT ICE AGE 



caused the greatest height of the mountains to coincide with 

 the greatest depression of the plains, and vica versa, and show- 

 ing the Cordilleran glacier must have been separated by a 

 water area from that of the Laurentide hills on the east, thus 

 concludes :— 



"It is now distinctly known, as the result of work done 

 under the auspices of the Geological Survey of Canada, and 

 more particularly of observations by the writer and his col- 

 leagues, Messrs. McConnel and Tyrrell, that the extreme 

 margins of the western and eastern glaciated areas of the 

 continent barely overlap, and then only to a very limited 

 extent, while the two great centres of dispersion were entirely 

 distinct. For numerous reasons which cannot be here entered 

 into, the writer does not consider it probable, or even possible, 

 that the great confluent glacier of the north-eastern part of the 

 continent extended at any time far into the area of the great 

 plains ; but erratics and drift derived from this ice mass did so 

 extend, and are found between the 49th and 50th parallels, 

 stranded on the surface of moraines produced by the large 

 local glaciers of the Rocky Mountains. Recognising, however, 

 the essential separateness of the western and eastern confluent 

 ice masses, and the fact that it is no longer appropriate to desig- 

 nate one of these the "continental glacier," the writer ventures 

 to propose that the eastern mer de glace may appropriately be 

 named the great Laurentide glacier, while its westefn fellow is 

 known as the " Cordilleran glacier." It may be added that 

 there is good evidence to show that both the Laurentide and 

 Cordilleran glaciers discharged into open water to the north." 



These conclusions, based on a large induction of facts 

 applying to a very large area of the North American Continent, 

 coincide with my own observations in the east, and with the 

 inferences deducible from the present condition of Greenland 

 and Arctic America. 



When extreme glacialists point to Greenland and ask us to 



