SECRETARY'S REPORT. 175 



any discrimination of size or weight or nature of the materials, 

 and without a trace of stratification. Such a bank of drift, 

 when examined carefully, will be found to consist of large 

 materials below as well as on top, and such materials in the 

 centre as well as on top and below ; and between them, mate- 

 rials of all sizes, from pebbles of the size of your fist, down to 

 smaller pebbles, and finally small sand, and may be, impalpable 

 loam, all of which is mixed pell-mell, with no trace of stratifi- 

 cation, to the very summit. And all of these materials will be 

 found not rounded, but hafing their surfaces more^ or less pol- 

 ished. They do not present the character of beach shingle ; 

 they are not washed clean ; they are loamy, and the loam upon 

 them is the sticking loam, which adlieres to these boulders, — 

 they are, as it were, cemented together by the intervening loam ; 

 while all the sand which is found along-shore is washed clean of 

 all these fine materials. When we find a deposit of clay, we 

 find it by itself, where the water throws ashore only these 

 minute materials ; we do not find loam, sand, and pebbles 

 mixed together, as in our drift, in any shore deposit. 



If you examine some of these pebbles or these boulders, which 

 have not suffered at the surface from decomposition, you will 

 sec that the surface is very polished, shining ; it has not the dull 

 appearance of beach shingle ; it does not seem to have been 

 rounded, but rubbed and polished ; and these polished surfaces 

 exhibit also scratclies in various directions, as if at some time 

 these materials had been held fast, as in a vice, while a mov- 

 able rasp was passed over them,' and then, having been turned 

 over, they had received another hard rubbing, which scratched 

 that surface ; and, as if all that had been done at the same time 

 that the surface was being polished with minute powder. This 

 is the character of all these materials ; and above this mixture 

 of all kinds of materials, you may find the largest and most 

 colossal boulders, and they will be angular, showing no sign of 

 abrasion. Now, conceive, for a moment, water passing over 

 that. You see at once that all these heavy, loose materials will 

 fall to the bottom, and that the lighter material will be carried 

 forward, or, in the end, accumulate on the top of the other. 

 You must find another agent than water, then, to account for 

 the transportation of these loose materials. Now, what can this 

 agent be ? 



