108 • THE ICE AGE IN CANADA. 



I have already, in Chapter II., referred to the modern 

 boulder-belt of the shores of the estuary of the St. 

 Lawrence as seen at Little Metis, and may now adduce it 

 as an example of a pseudo-moraine as well as of detached 

 groups of boulders, produced by the present field-ice in 

 winter, and giving proof of the movement of great 

 boulders by this agency and the piling of them up, at and 

 near the line of low water. The frontispiece shows the 

 appearance of the boulder-belt at Little Metis, and it is 

 to be borne in mind that the greater part of the boulders 

 were originally derived from the Laurentian hills thirty- 

 five miles or more distant to the northward, and that 

 these boulders are moved about from year to year by the 

 ice. Similar facts collected by Capt. Bayfield will be 

 found in Lyell's Principles of Geology. 



I should add here that while the old glacial striae on 

 the rocks at Little Metis run ^N'.N.E., there are on the 

 modern pavements of boulders less pronounced striations 

 running in a similar direction, or about N.E., and which 

 must be produced by the modern field-ice drifting up and 

 down with the tidal currents. 



We are indebted to Prof. H. Y. Hind for a graphic 

 description of the action of sea-ice on the coast of 

 Labrador, in the form known as " Pan Ice." * 



" ' Pan ice ' is derived from bay ice. Hoes, and coast ice, 

 varying from five to ten or twelve feet in thickness, all of 

 which are broken up during spring storms. When the 

 disruption of the ice-sheet which seals the fiords, the 

 island zone, and the sea itself for many miles outside, 

 continuously, is effected in June, the resulting ' pans,' as 

 the fishermen term them, vary in size from a few square 



* Canadian Naluralist, Vol. VIII., 1877. 



