HISTORICAL NOTICKS. J5 



glacier suj)po.se<l could have no such clilTs from which to 

 collect: and it must have carried l)oulilers for hundreds 

 of miles, and left them on points as high as those they 

 were taken from. On the ^Montreal Mountain, at a 

 lieight of GOO feet above the sea, are Inige boulders of 

 gneiss from the Laurentide hills, which nnist have heen 

 carried 50 to 100 miles from i)oints of scarcely greater 

 elevation, and over a valley in which the stri.e are in a 

 direction nearly at right angles with that of the ])rol)al)le 

 driftage of the boulders. Quite as striking examples 

 occur in many jtarts of this country.* It is also to be 

 ol)served that boulders, often of large size, occur scattered 

 through the marine stratified clavs and sands containing 

 sea-shells; and whatever views may be entertained as to 

 otlier boulders, it cannot be denied tliat these have been 

 borne by floating ice. Xor is it true, as has l)een often 

 attirmed, that the boulder-clay is destitute of marine 

 fossils. At ]\Iurray liay, lliviere du Lou}) and 8t. Nicholas, 

 on the St. Lawrence, and also at Ca]»e Elizabeth, near 

 Portland, tliere are tough stony clays of the nature of true 

 "till," and in the lower part of tiie drift, which contain 

 numerous marine sliells of the usual pleistocene species. 



" 4. The i>leistocene dejwsits of Canada, in their fossil 

 remains and general character, indicate a gradual eleva- 

 tion from a state of de})ression, which, on the evidence of 

 fossils, must have extended to at least oOO feet, and on 

 that of far-travelled boulders, to nearly ten times that 

 amount, while there is nothing but the boulder-clay to 

 represent the previous subsidence, and nothing whatever 



* The same fact, and to heights still greater, has l)een shown by 

 Ells and others to liold of the liills of the Eastern Townships of Canada, 

 and by Chalmers in Eastern Quebec and in New Brunswick. 



