156 THE ICE AGE IN CANADA. 



The Leda clay occurs in several places, In 1860 I pub- 

 lished a list of species collected by Capt. Orlebar ; arid 

 Packard has greatly added to the number, giving a list 

 which will be referred to farther on. Dr. Packard very 

 truly remarks that the fauna of the Labrador clays is very 

 similar to that now found on the coast, and called by him 

 the Syrtensian fauna. In the latter we have a few south- 

 ern forms, absent in the clay, but this is all. Further, the 

 Labrador pleistocene fauna is identical or nearly so with 

 that of similar deposits in South Greenland, described by 

 Moller and Eink. Thus the climatal conditions of the 

 Arctic current on the coast of Labrador seem to have in 

 no respect differed in the Pleistocene from those which 

 obtain at present. The Leda clay with its character- 

 istic fossils is found as high as 500 feet above the level of 

 the sea. 



Eaised beaches and terraces, whether cut into sand and 

 clay or the hard metamorphic rocks of the coast, are as 

 common in Labrador as along the shores- of the river St. 

 Lawrence. Their precise altitudes are not given, but they 

 appear to be very numerous and rise to a great height 

 above the sea. One feature of some interest is their 

 consisting in some places of large stones and boulders, 

 evidencing very powerful action of coast ice and currents. 

 Packard speaks of many of these beaches as glacier 

 moraines modified by the sea. From the descriptions of 

 Prof. Hind,* it would also seem that there are traces of 

 local glaciers in the river valleys, similar to those referred 

 to above in the case of the Saguenay and the Murray 

 river, and these might now be restored by a slight 

 increase of cold or a moderate elevation of the land. 



* Trans. Geol. Society, 1864. 



