PHYSICAL AND CLIMATAL CONDITIONS. 81 



near to the ocean to receive and condense its burden of 

 watery vapour. This is the cause of the present state of 

 Greenland, and similar conditions would account for that 

 great Cordilleran glacier which Dr. G. M. Dawson has 

 shown existed in Pleistocene times on the mountains of 

 British Columbia, and for the Laurentide glacier or local 

 glaciers which it is known existed on the Laurentian * 

 highlands of Canada and even on the extension of the 

 Appalachian mountains in eastern Canada.f On this 

 subject I may quote here the conclusions of the well- 

 known Eiissian geographerjo n Woeick o ff , :] : as summarized 

 in a partial translation published in the " Canadian 

 Naturalist " in 1882. I ought perhaps to apologize for 

 repeating here common and even trite conclusions of 

 physical geography ; but my excuse must be the neglect 

 with which they have been treated by so many geologists, 

 and the extent to wdiich theories altogether at variance 

 with them have been promidgated. 



I may say at the outset that I fully agree with the 

 views as to the mot mi of glaciers contained in the sub- 

 joined extract : 



" The fuller consideration of the physical properties of 

 glacier ice leads to essentially the same conclusions as 

 those to which Forbes was led forty-one years ago, by the 

 study of the larger phenomena of glacier motion, that is, 

 that the motion is that of a slightly viscous mass, partly 

 sliding upon its bed, partly shearing upon itself under the 



* Notes on Post-pliocene, 1872. See also a paper by McGee in the 

 the Proc. American Association (Boston, 1880, p. 447), and Dana in 

 American Journal of Science, 1872. 



t Chalmers' Glaciation of N. New Brunswick, etc.. Trans. R.S.C. 

 1886. 



t Geological Society, Berlin, 1881. 

 7 



