THE COBALT SERIES; ITS CHARACTER AND ORIGIN 137 
As opposed to the glacial hypothesis, it has been maintained 
that glaciated surfaces should somewhere be found beneath the 
basal conglomerate instead of the ancient regolith which is com- 
monly present. In reply to this objection, Coleman has pointed 
out that “‘near the edge of a glaciated area where the thickness of 
ice is not great, the ice sheet often moves for many miles over 
loose material without ever reaching the rock surface beneath,” 
and that this condition existed over thousands of square miles in 
certain parts of the United States during the Pleistocene continental 
glacial epoch and also throughout a large part of the area covered 
by carboniferous bowlder clay in India.2 It must, furthermore, 
be recalled that the number of points at which the junction of the 
Cobalt series and the underlying basement has been examined is 
not great and that, at some of these, the contact is sharply defined, 
the conglomerate resting on a smoothly eroded surface. The 
latter might well be glaciated surfaces, although stream erosion 
or wave action might no doubt produce a similar effect. 
Owing to the firmly cemented character of the conglomerates 
of the Cobalt series, it is difficult to separate the pebbles and bowl- 
ders from their matrix, but during the summer of 1911 an excep- 
tionally favorable locality was found at the eastern end of the 
Kekeko Hills in Boischatel Township, Que., where Mr. E. M. 
Burwash, who assisted the writer in the field, succeeded in breaking 
out some pebbles from the conglomerate which were definitely 
scratched in several directions (Fig. 3). The conglomerate at this 
point lies almost horizontal and has been neither mashed nor faulted, 
so that the scratches cannot be attributed to dynamic action.’ 
The pebbles exhibiting the scratches consist of fine grained green- 
stone and possess the typical rounded corners and faceted faces 
of glacial stones. 
In order to obtain further definite evidence bearing on the 
glacial origin of the Cobalt series, an attempt was made to count 
the “‘soled’”’ pebbles and bowlders in the conglomerates. Only 
those stones having rounded corners and two or more plane faces, 
t Ann. Rep. Bur. of Mines, Ont., Pt. 2, p. 58; Can. Min. Jour., XXX, 646-97. 
2 Jour. Geol., XIV (1908), 155; Can. Min. Jour., XXX, 694. 
3 Ann. Rep. Bur. of Mines, Ont. (1907), Pt. 2, p. 58. 
