174 THE ICE AGE IN CANADA. 



modern sea, the Pleistocene beds assume a much more 

 southern aspect in their fossils, the boreal forms altogether 

 disappearing. For a very full exhibition of these facts, I 

 may refer to Dr. Packard's paper. 



The stratified sand and gravel of Nova Scotia rests 

 upon and is newer than the boulder-clay, and is also 

 newer than the stratified marine clays above referred to. 

 Its age is probably that of the Saxicava sand of the St. 

 Lawrence valley. The former relation may often be seen 

 in coast sections or river banks, and occasionally in road 

 cuttings. I observed some years ago an instructive 

 illustration of this fact in a bank on the shore a little to 

 the eastward of Merigomish harbour, At this place the 

 lower part of the bank consists of clay and sand with 

 angular stones, principally sandstones. Upon this rests a 

 bed of fine sand and small rounded gravel with layers of 

 coarser pebbles. The gravel is separated from the drift 

 below by a layer of the same sort of angular stones that 

 appear in the drift, showing that the currents which 

 deposited the upper bed have washed away some of the 

 finer portions of the drift before the sand and gravel were 

 thrown down. In this section, as well as in most others 

 that I have examined, the lower part of the stratified 

 gravel is finer than the upper part, and contains more sand. 



In some cases we can trace the pebbles of the gravels 

 to ancient conglomerate rocks which have furnished them 

 by their decay; but in other instances the pebbles may 

 have been rounded by the waters that deposited them in 

 their present place. In places, however, where old pebble 

 rocks do not occur, we sometimes find, instead of gravel, 

 beds of fine laminated sand. A very remarkable instance 

 of the connection of superficial gravels with ancient 

 pebble rocks occurs in the county of Pictou. In the coal 



