THE POST- PLIOCENE. 25 



embedded. These boulders are not usually large, though some were 

 seen as mucli as rive feet in length. The boulders in this deposit arc 

 almost universally of the native rock, and must have been produced 

 by the grinding of ice on the outcrops of the harder beds. In the 

 eastern and middle portion of the island, only these native rocks 

 were seen in the clay, with the exception of pebbles of quartzite, 

 which may have been derived from the Tiiassic conglomerates. At 

 Campbellton, in the western part of the island, 1 observed a bed of 

 boulder clay rilled with boulders of metamorphic rocks similar to 

 those of the mainland of New Brunswick. 



Strias were seen only in one place on the north-eastern coast and at 

 another on the south-western. In the former case their direction was 

 nearly S.W. and N.E. In the latter it was S. 70° E. 



No marine remains were observed in the boulder clay ; but at 

 Campbellton, above the boulder clay already mentioned, there is a 

 limited area occupied with beds of stratified sand and gravel, at an 

 elevation of about 50 feet above the sea, and in one of the beds there 

 are shells of Tellina Grocnlandica. 



On the surface of the country, more especially in the western part 

 of the island, there are numerous travelled boulders, sometimes of 

 considerable size. As these do not appear in situ in the boulder 

 clay, they may be supposed to belong to a second or newer boulder 

 drift, similar to that which we find to be connected with the !Saxi- 

 cava sand in Canada. These boulders being of rocks foreign to 

 Prince Edward Island, the question of their source becomes an 

 interesting one. With reference to this, it may be stated in general 

 terms that the majority are granite, syenite, diorite, felsite, por- 

 phyry, quartzite, and coarse slates, all identical in mineral character 

 with those which occur in the metamorphic districts of Nova Scotia 

 and New Brunswick, at distances of from 50 to 200 miles to the south 

 and south-west, though some of them may have been derived from 

 Cape Breton on the east. It is further to be observed, that these 

 boulders are most abundant and the evidences of denudation of the 

 Trias greatest in that part of the island which is opposite the deep break 

 between the hills of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, occupied by the 

 l?ay of Fundy, Chiegneeto Bay, and the low country extending thence 

 to Northumberland Strait, an evidence that the boulder drift was con- 

 nected with currents of water passing up this depression from the south 

 or south-west. Similar local drift occurs in Nova Scotia (see Chap. 

 v.), though there the predominant direction is from the northward. 



JJesides these boulders, however, there are others of a ditVerent 

 character; such as gneiss, hornblende-schist, aiKU'thosite ami Lab- 

 radorite rock, which must have been derived from the Laurentian 



