16 TIIH ICK AGE IN CANADA. 



to represent tlie supposed ])r(^vious ice-elad state of the 

 land, exeept the seratehes on the rock-surt'aces, which 

 must have been caused hy the same a<j;ency which 

 deposited the boulder-chiy.* 



"5. The peat deposits with lir-roots, I'ountl heh)W the 

 boulder-clay in Cape lireton, tlie remains oi" i)liints and 

 land-snails in the maiine clays of the Ottawa, and the 

 shells of the St. I.awrence elavs and sands, show that the 

 sea at the period in ([uestion had nearly the tem])erature 

 of the jn'esent arctic currents of our coasts, and that the 

 land was nt)t covered with ice, but sup])orted a ve^i^elation 

 similar to that of Labrador and the north shore of the St. 

 Lawrence at present. Tins tividence refers not to the 

 later periotl of the mammoth and mastodon, when the 

 re-elevation was perhaps nearly complete, but to the 

 earlier period contemporiineous with, or innnediately fol- 

 lowinj^-, the supposed glacier-peri(»d. In my former 

 papers on the i'leistocene of the St. Lawrence, I have 

 shown that the chan^L*e of climate involved is not greater 

 than that which may have been due to the subsidence of 

 land, and to the change of course of the e([uatorial and 

 arctic currents, actually ju'oved by the deposits them- 

 s> Ives. 



" These objections might be purs\ied to much greater 

 length : but enough has been said to show that there are 

 in the case of north-eastern America, strong reasons 

 against the existence of any such period of extreme 

 glaciation as sup])osed by numy geologists ; and that if we 

 can otherwise exjdain the rock striation and ])olishing, 

 and the forntation of fiords an<l lake-basins, the strong 



* This was inteiuleil to apply to tlie valley of the St. Lawrence, not 

 to the mountainous regions having local glaciers. 



