172 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



rials, the surface of which is smooth, polished, scratched and 

 grooved, and the solid foundation of the rock over which these 

 materials are moved, which exhibit polished, grooved surfaces, 

 just like those under the glacier now. These grooves all trend 

 in a north-southerly direction, and the nature of the rocks favors 

 the idea that the transportation has been from the north to the 

 south. So that here is found the machinery which has ground 

 these loose materials, and the result has been the grinding down 

 of tlie rocks into a kind of paste, wherever the loose materials 

 were soft enough to be ground to powder, and with that powder 

 a mixture of loose materials in which there is no arrangement 

 in accordance with their weight. You find in these accumula- 

 tions of glacier wall materials minute pieces at the very contact 

 of the rock, larger and larger pebbles througli the whole mass, 

 and on top perhaps the very largest ; and wherever you find 

 large angular boulders, they are always on top of the whole. 

 And why is that ? Because the large angular boulders travelled 

 on the back of the ice, and were not submitted to any friction, 

 while the loose materials which were under the ice were press- 

 ing against each other, and were under that great friction re- 

 sulting from the superincumbent weight. The materials on top 

 of the ice were carried on, floated down, as it were, without 

 friction, and therefore did not lose their angles ; and wlierever 

 the ice melted away, these angular materials came down, and 

 are now found resting everywhere upon these ground, rounded 

 and polished materials. 



Now, this same agency has been at work on this continent. 

 Wlien I first reached the coast of America, at Halifax, the 

 steamer stopped for a few hours, and I ran up to the fortress 

 and there saw, in a moment, all those signs which were so 

 familiar to me. I saw at once that the same agency had been 

 at work there, and since that time I have traclced this force over 

 the whole continent. From the coast of Nova Scotia to the foot 

 of the Rocky Mountains there is not a foot of solid rock exposed, 

 which has been disintegrated by the agency of the atmosphere, 

 which does not show these marks of the working of ice. Every- 

 where are the newly-exposed surfaces polished, grooved and 

 scratched, and the direction of this engraving is everywhere 

 from north to soutli, deviating sometimes a little to the east 

 or the west according to the lay of the land. Everywhere wo 



