J. Milne — Ice and Ice-tvork in Newfoundland. 349 



have good sections of an unstratified clayey base, containing both 

 pebl)les and boulders. 



Further to the north Mr. Murray has observed these superficial 

 deposits occurring on a much larger scale. In Little Bay, near 

 Terra Nova Mine, he has noted deposits consisting of " probably 

 fifty or sixty feet of stratified claj^ gravel, and sand containing 

 modern marine shells at the height of about 40 feet above high- 

 water mark." 



In Hall's Bay, up Indian Brook, he also noted stratified deposits 

 of clay, " which is sometimes of a reddish and sometimes of a drab 

 or bluish colour." Although these stratified deposits appear to show 

 a divergence from what has hitherto been observed by Packard and 

 others in the neighbouring mainland of Labrador, they show con- 

 siderable relation and similarity to observations which have been 

 made further up the valley of the St. Lawrence in Canada. It 

 would seem that at no very remote period Newfoundland has been 

 almost if not entirely subjected to the action of ice. To this fact 

 the rounded hills, the basin-shaped hollows, the scored rocks, the 

 erratic blocks and the immense coverings of drift, all bear testi- 

 mony; but the mode in which all these phenomena have been 

 brought about is a matter so speculative that I shall refrain from 

 doing more than indicating a possible manner in which they may 

 have occurred, rather than attempting to give any definite solution to 

 such an obscure enigma. 



Conclusions. — • The general conclusions which might appear 

 naturally to result from a consideration of observations made by 

 myself during two summers travelling in the island, and also those 

 made by other geologists, are as follows : — 



If Newfoundland has been steadily rising during past ages, as it 

 now appears to have done at no very remote geological period, it may 

 have been beneath the surface of the ocean. During the period 

 when it was undergoing elevation, no doubt a considerable amount 

 of debris and boulders were dropped by icebergs over its surface 

 when the Laurentian backbone, which would be the first land to 

 emerge, reached the surface, it formed a barrier for the coast-ice 

 which would carry its load of boulders and strew them with those 

 of the bergs. This latter, as will hereafter be shown, might to 

 some degree have been influential in giving a definite character to 

 the rising area. After the final emergence the climate of New- 

 foundland might still have been a cold one, and the same highlands 

 which gave birth to coast-ice, probably next gave birth to glaciers 

 which scooped and hollowed out a great portion of the remaining 

 marine drift, and left the island with its present contour. After the 

 raising of the great North-East and South-East ranges, first coast- 

 ice flowed East and West, and afterwards the glaciers followed in 

 a similar direction, and thus perhaps the origin of the boulders, those 

 which are so curiously perched being due rather to the latter than 

 to the former. Thus it would seem that icebergs and coast-ice pre- 

 ceded glaciers, but to say what might have come before the former 

 of these agents, would only be diving deeper into the de23t]is of a 



