3850 3=Dr. G. M. Dawson— Glaciation of British Columbia. 
advanced by various writers who have referred its origin to ordinary 
sedimentation need not be considered farther. 
In reference to the accumulation of loess through the vital action 
of vegetation as advocated by Richthofen, it is perhaps sufficient to 
suggest, as has been done by T. W. Kingsmill,! “that plants could 
furnish to the mineral accumulations only what they took from it, 
and hence could add nothing.” Apparently no exception can be 
taken to this argument, unless it be that plants may add carbon 
derived from the carbonic acid of the atmosphere, to the soils in 
which they grow. 
The similarity between the loess of China and the adobe of the 
Arid Region is so close that they might properly be designated by 
the same name; but, as confusion has apparently already arisen from 
the too general use of the former name, it has been thought best to 
use a new term instead. 
Wasuineton, D.C., Noy. 27, 1888. 
II].—Guactation or Hic Points 1n tHe SoutHern INTERIOR OF 
British CoLumBiA. 
By Grorce M. Dawson, D.Sc., F.G.S. ; 
Assistant-Director of the Geological Survey of Canada. 
N an article published in the Grotocican Magazine for August, 
1888, an outline was presented of some facts resulting from 
recent investigations on the glaciation of British Columbia and 
adjacent regions, bearing more particularly on the flow of ice in a 
northerly direction brought to light by explorations in the Yukon 
district, but touching also on the south-eastern extension of the 
great western glacier-mass of the continent, which I have proposed 
to name the Cordilleran glacier. Field-work carried out by me 
during the summer of 1888 has resulted in the accumulation of 
many new facts relating to the southern part of the area, which was 
at one time covered by the Cordilleran glacier, from which it would 
appear that it may ultimately be possible not only to trace the 
various stages in the recession of the main front of the great 
confluent glacier beneath which the interior or plateau region of 
British Columbia was buried, but even to follow the later stages 
of its decline as it became broken up into numerous local glaciers 
confined to the valleys of the several mountain ranges which limit 
the plateau. 
As, however, work is to be continued in the same southern part 
of British Columbia during the present summer, it is not at present 
intended to discuss these general features, but merely to call attention 
to the noteworthy heights at which glaciation has now been found to 
occur on some of the higher parts of the Interior Plateau and its 
mountains, and to the great mass thereby indicated for the southern 
part of the Cordilleran glacier. 
The highest point on which I had previously noted the marks of 
1 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. London, 1878, vol. xxvii. p. 380. 
