24 THE ICE AGE IN CANADA. 



Rocky Mountains proper on the east, and the coast ranges 

 on the Pacific, and stretched from Victoria to latitude 59. 

 All this region, consisting of the mountain ranges and of 

 the elevated plateau between them, was once occupied by 

 a confluent glacier 1,200 miles long and 400 miles wide. 

 The main gathering-ground, however, was between the 

 55th and 59th parallels. Thence the ice flowed north- 

 ward 350 miles, and southward about 600 miles, diverging, 

 in the intervening distance, easterly and westerly." 



The Laurentide glacier had for its centre of distribution 

 the highlands called the Laurentian mountains, one arm 

 of which lies between Hudson's Bay and the great 

 plains of British America. Hitherto, most of our know- 

 ledge of glacier movements has pertained to the south- 

 ward-moving portions of this great sheet, but we now 

 know that the remoter parts moved north and north-west. 

 Dr. Bell has shown that there was also a centre of 

 distribution in the peninsula of Labrador, from which 

 movements radiated east, west, south and north, but 

 without reaching the coast northward. This, however, 

 may not have been an independent centre of snowy 

 accumulation, as one arm of the Laurentian ridge extends 

 through Labrador. 



Appended to this chapter is a list of the several papers 

 referred to above and in the following chapters, part of 

 which have appeared in the " Canadian Naturalist and 

 Geologist," and its successor, the " Canadian Record of 

 Science." 



References to memoirs by other authors will be found 

 in their proper places in the subsequent chapters. 



