HISTORICAL NOTICES. 5 



with which huge piles of fallen rock are removed by the 

 floating ice from the base of the trap cliffs of the bay of 

 Fundy. Let us suppose, then, the surface of our province, 

 while its projecting rocks were still uncovered by surface 

 deposits, exposed for many successive centuries to the 

 action of alternate frosts and thaws, the whole of the 

 untravelled drift might have been accumulated on its 

 surface. Let it then be submerged until its hill-tops 

 should become islands or reefs of rock in a sea loaded in 

 winter and spring with drift ice, floated along by currents, 

 which, like the present arctic current, would set from 

 N.E. to S.W. with various modifications produced by local 

 causes. We have in these causes ample means for 

 accounting for the whole of the appearances, including 

 the travelled blocks and the scratched and polished rock- 

 surfaces." 



This was written, it may be observed, thirty-five years 

 ago, and with reference to the phenomena presented by 

 southern New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, where there 

 is little if any evidence of glacier action. 



When, in the autumn of 1855, my residence was 

 transferred to Montreal, my attention was necessarily 

 devoted to the pleistocene deposits of Central Canada, 

 and I asked Sir W. E. Logan, then Director of the 

 Geological Survey, to place in my hands, as an amateur, 

 the pleistocene geology of this field, which he readily 

 consented to do, as no one connected with the survey was 

 specially cultivating it at the time. I proceeded, in the 

 first instance, to explore the stratigraphical arrangement 

 and fossils of the deposits, dividing the former into the 

 three groups of Boulder Clay, Leda Clay and Saxicava 

 Sand, and raising the known species of fossils in a few 

 years from a very small number to about 200. Notices 



