SOME LOCAL DETAILS. 155 



the glaciation to land ice shoving from the interior of the 

 island, supposing certain submerged banks across the 

 mouths of the bays to be terminal moraines. (See also 

 the reports on the Geology of Newfoundland, by Murray 

 and Howley.) 



The latest information on the Pleistocene of Labrador 

 is that given in a paper by Dr. Packard in the memoirs of 

 the Boston Society of Natural History for 1867. The 

 deposits are said to consist of boulders, Leda clay and sand, 

 and raised beaches, which, on the authority of Prof. Hind, 

 are stated to reach an elevation of 1,200 feet above the sea. 

 The hills to a height of 2,500 feet are rounded as if by ice 

 action. Some higher hills present a frost-shattered surface 

 at their summits. No directions of striae are given, and 

 they appear to be rare. Mr. Campbell, author of " Frost 

 and Fire," mentions examples with course N. 45 E. in the 

 strait of Belle-isle. It is remarkable that true boulder- 

 clay is rare in Labrador, though loose boulders are 

 abundant in the valleys and on the inland table-land. 

 Dr. Packard attributes the absence of boulder-clay To 

 denudation. This may be the case, but it is to be observed 

 that, on that view of the origin of boulder-clay which 

 attributes it to ice-laden Arctic .currents, there must 

 always have been in the course of such currents areas of 

 denudation as well as areas of deposition, and an elevated 

 table-land like that of Labrador, in a high northern lati- 

 tude, may well have been of the former character, or may 

 have been a land area covered with snow and ice at the 

 time of the deposition of the boulder-clay. In many 

 respects, though less elevated, it resembles the aspect of 

 the Cordillera region of the west as described by Dr. G. M. 

 Dawson. 



