HISTORICAL NOTICES. 23 



It is true that many of these writers still speak of an 

 ice-sheet as possibly extending across North America ; 

 but their own statements, as well as the now universally 

 understood fact that the interior plateaux of great con- 

 tinents cannot under any circumstances receive snow 

 enough to breed great glaciers, point to entirely different 

 conclusions. 



Lastly, in evidence of the gradual return to more 

 moderate opinions, I may quote the words of a veteran 

 glacialist, and a man of wide knowledge and power of 

 thought, who has recently passed away. Alexander Win- 

 chell thus refers to Canadian conclusions in a paper on 

 " Kecent Views about Glaciers " : 



" Now, the most unexpected results of all the recent 

 researches appear to be these : There has been no conti- 

 nental glacier. There has been no uniform southerly 

 movement of glacier masses. Tliere has been no persistent 

 declivity, as a sine qua non down which glacier movements 

 have taken place. The continuity of the supposed conti- 

 nental glacier was interrupted in the regions of the dry 

 and treeless plains of the West; and in the interior and 

 Pacific belts of the continent, within the United States, 

 ancient glaciation was restricted to the elevated slopes. 

 A non-glaciated belt, lying a few miles east of the 

 foothills of the Rockies, extends all the way to the 

 unglaciated arctic region 



" Another unexpected result of continent-wide observa- 

 tion is the discovery of glacial striations tending in all 

 directions from two general centres. One of these is a 

 north-eastern centre of glaciation, which Dr. G. M. 

 Dawson proposes to call the ' Laurentide ' centre ; the 

 other is a north-western centre, which he calls ' Cordille- 

 ran.' The Cordilleran glacier lay between the range of the 



