86 THE ICE AGE IN CANADA. 



On the other hand, the evidence of great local glaciers 

 in the Pleistocene period is of the best possible descrip- 

 tion. I may refer here to the indications obtained by 

 Dr. G. M. Dawson of an immense glacier or group of 

 glaciers occupying the Cordillera of British Columbia, and 

 discharging its ice to the north into the Yukon valley, to 

 the south into Puget sound, and to the west into the 

 Pacific. Here, as he has shown, the conditions were 

 combined of a high mountain chain with the Pacific on 

 the west, and the then submerged area of the great plains 

 on the east, affording next to Greenland the grandest 

 gathering-ground for snow and ice that the northern 

 hemisphere has seen. 



The movement of ice north and south from the old 

 gathering-ground of the Laurentian axis has been shown 

 by the reports of arctic explorers and of the geological 

 survey.* That from the Notre Dame mountains on the 

 south side of the St. Lawrence, as shown by Chalmers,t 

 and the radiation of ice from the central districts of 

 Newfoundland, as described by Kerr and Murray, J are 

 other examples. 



Thus the existence of local glaciers on the west and 

 east and on the higher lands facing the north has been 

 established, and this not merely in the later, but in the 

 earlier Pleistocene ; but whatever of increase or diminu- 

 tion they experienced in the course of that period, they 

 could never have become a continental glacier, spreading 

 over the plains, nor could there have been a polar ice-cap, 



* See papers and reports already referred to, by Dawson, Bell and 

 others. 



t Trans. R.S.C., 1886. 



Journal Geol. Society, 1876. Reports and Survey of Newfound- 

 land. 



