206 Moose -Hunting in Canada. 



puzzled me at the time and has done so ever since. I was in Nova 

 Scotia in the fall, when one day my Indian told me that in a lake 

 close by all the rocks were moving out of the water, a circumstance 

 which I thought not a little strange. However, I went to look at 

 the unheard-of spectacle, and sure enough there were the rocks 

 apparently all moving out of the water on to dry land. The lake is 

 of considerable extent, but shallow, and full of great masses of rock. 

 Many of these masses appear to have traveled right out of the lake, 

 and are now high and dry some fifteen yards above the margin of 

 the water. They have plowed deep and regularly defined chan- 

 nels for themselves. You may see them of all sizes, from blocks of, 

 say, roughly speaking, six or eight feet in diameter, down to stones 

 which a man could lift. Moreover, you find them in various stages 

 of progress: some a hundred yards or more from shore, and appar- 

 ently just beginning to move ; others half way to their destination, 

 and others, again, as I have said, high and dry above the water. 

 In all cases there is a distinct groove or furrow which the rock 

 has clearly plowed for itself. I noticed one particularly good 

 specimen, an enormous block, which lay some yards above high- 

 water mark. The earth and stones were heaped up in front of it to 

 a height of three or four feet. There was a deep furrow, the exact 

 breadth of the block, leading down directly from it into the lake, 

 and extending till it was hidden from my sight by the depth of the 

 water. Loose stones and pebbles were piled up on each side of this 

 groove in a regular clearly defined line. I thought at first that, 

 from some cause or other, the smaller stones, pebbles, and sand had 

 been dragged down from above, and consequently had piled them- 

 selves up in front of all the large rocks too heavy to be moved, and 

 had left a vacant space or furrow behind the rocks. But if that had 

 been the case, the drift of moving material would of course have 

 joined together again in the space of a few yards behind the fixed 

 rocks. On the contrary, these grooves or furrows remained the 

 same width throughout their entire length, and have, I think, 

 undoubtedly been caused by the rock forcing its way up through the 

 loose shingle and stones which compose the bed of the lake. What 

 power has set these rocks in motion it is difficult to decide. The 

 action of ice is the only thing that might explain it ; but how ice 

 could exert itself in that special manner, and why, if ice is the cause 



