1872.] BLEASDELL MODERN GLACIAL ACTION IN CANADA. 393 



Quinte, the Canadian river Trent discharges its waters at the vUlage 

 of Trenton ; and a mile above the latter the lower or Frankford 

 Rapids terminate. These rapids extend for about nine miles up the 

 river, from this point to a mile above the village of Frankford, where 

 there is again deep and navigable water. Between these two points 

 the river runs over a limestone bed of the upper Trenton series of 

 the Lower Silurian rocks, and the rapids are thus formed. At in- 

 tervals small islands exist in what are sometimes designated as 

 the Nine-mile Rapids. These tend consequently to increase the 

 force of the stream by the impediments they present to its course. 

 The islands are thinly strewn with a gravelly soil, and are mostly 

 covered with trees, of a similar character to those on the river's 

 banks, and with low brushwood, in which the Canadian wild grape 

 ( Vitis vul^ina) luxuriates in particular spots. 



About six miles from Trenton there was an island known by the 

 name of Fidlar's Island ; and here the effects of glacial action in the 

 shape of ground-, anchor-, or pack-ice have recently become con- 

 spicuous. This island, once nearly sixty feet in length, has disap- 

 peared within the last eighteen months. All these islands lie, 

 for obvious reasons, lengthwise in the stream ; and the widest por- 

 tion of the island in question may have been twenty-five or thirty 

 feet in width. In the winter of 1869-70 the anchor-ice had so 

 acted upon the surface of Fidlar's Island, and on its former site, as 

 entirely to remove it and leave the subjacent rock entirely bare. 

 And in the month of April 1870, when the waters of the Trent 

 were unusually high from the melting snows of the region which it 

 drains (at least, with its tributaries, 150 miles in extent), a large 

 portion of the upper surface of this island came floating down 

 on the face of the stream, and was seen at the viUage of Trenton 

 below, with the trees and bushes on it in the upright position in 

 which they grew. 



Recently some observations on Ground-ice and its Results, by 

 Henry Landor, Esq., M.D., Superintendent of the Maiden Asylum 

 in this province, and communicated to the Entomological Society, 

 London, Ontario, have been kindly laid before me by the Rev. C. J. 

 Bethune, M.A., Principal of Trinity College School, and our most 

 distinguished Provincial entomologist. This essay contains some 

 most valuable and, I believe, philosophical remarks on the formation 

 of ground- or anchor-ice in the rivers and streams of Canada. I in- 

 sert the remarks of Dr. Landor, as published in a local organ, and 

 issued by the Entomological Society, in illustration of the phenomenon 

 under consideration : — " When the thermometer falls to 10° of Fahr- 

 enheit, ground-ice begins to form, but it is not at that temperature 

 long adherent to the bottom. As soon as the sun rises, it rises and 

 floats away in great abundance of small light porous portions of ice, 

 covering, for the most part, the centre of the stream. But when the 

 thermometer is at zero, the ice adheres to the bottom, and it is 

 most apparent where the stream is most rapid. It is then most 

 abundant where there is no surface-ice ; there is none where the 

 surface is frozen over. Depth of the stream, at any rate to six feet, 



