J855.] 



GEOLOGY IN AMEKICA. 



385 



MONTREAL NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



The ordinary monthly meeting of this Society was held in the JIuseum 

 on Monday evening, October 29th, His Lordship the Bishop of Montreal 

 in the chair. There were present Rev. A. D. Campbell, Drs. Workman, 

 Scott, Kingston, Craik, D. C. McCatlum, Barnston, Fraser, Trudel; 

 and Jlessrs. Latour, Davis, Browne, Simms, Dutton and Rennie. The 

 minutes of last ordinary meeting were read over and approveil. Mr. 

 W. H. A. Davis presented a copy of the revised By-laws, and reported 

 that one of the Sub-Committee appointed to prepare them, Professor 

 Andrews, had left this city for Quebec. The meeting filled up the 

 vacancy thus created, by the appointment of Dr. McCallum. Read, a 

 letter from Hector L. Langevin, Esq., of Quebec, a corresponding 

 member of the Society, transmitting a copy of a French Work on 

 Canada, written by him. Ordered, that the letter be acknowledged 

 and the thanks of the Society returned to the donor for his contribution. 

 Dr. Workman reported that in compliance with an application made by 

 him to the Board of Directors, the Smithsonian Institute had forwarded 

 for the Society a complete set of their valuable " Contributions to 

 Knowledge." Ordered that the volumes be acknowledged, and the 

 thanks of the Society returned to the Institute for their very generous 

 and valuable donation. The meeting then proceeded to ballot for 

 members, when R. Thomas, Esq., of Montreal, was declared unani- 

 mously elected an ordinary member, and Wm. Couper, Esq., of Toronto, 

 a corresponding member. The election of a First Vice-President, in 

 room of Professor Andrews, now residing in Quebec, was then com- 

 menced, the Chairman having appointed Dr. Workman and Mr. Dutton 

 Scrutineers. Upon examining the votes, L. A. H. Latour, Esq., was 

 found to have been duly elected ; and in room of Mr. Latoui-, as Second 

 Vice-President, W. H. A. Davis, Esq., was elected, and in room of Mr. 

 Davis, as Third Vice-President, the Rev. A. D. Campbell was elected. 

 The recommendation of the Council in their Annual Report to elect 

 His Excellency Sir Edmund Head an Honorary Member of the Society, 

 and which, in consequence of the absence of the requisite quorum pre- 

 scribed by the Act of Incorporation, had hitherto not been acted upon, 

 was next taken into consideration, and the Governor General elected 

 by acclamation. Dr. Fraser, Chairman of the Lecture Committee, 

 stated that so soon in January as their new Lecture Room would be 

 finished, the usual Winter Series of Lectures would be delivered by 

 Members of the Society. Several names were ali-eady on the list, and 

 the Committee had authorized him to express their hope that His 

 Lordship would so fivr honour them as to inaugurate the Course. The 

 Chairman said, that although they must not expect him to deliver a 

 Scientific Lecture, he would most certainly open the Course. This the 

 Society would naturally expect from the position which he held as its 

 President ; and though he had as yet been able to do but little in that 

 capacity to help them on, he would gladly introduce their lectures if 

 they felt it would assist them. The anuouucemeut was received with 

 applause, and the meeting adjourned. 



A. N. RENNIE, 



Recording Secretary 



Oeology 111 America* 



{Continued from page 361.) 



There are the following epochs in the Post-tertiary : the Drift 

 epoch, the Lnurcntiun epoch, an epoch of depression ; the Terrace epoch, 

 au epoch of elevation — three in number, unless the Drift and Laurentian 

 epochs are one and the same. 



As this piirticular point is one of much interest in American geology, 

 I will brieliy review some of the facts connected with the drift. 



The drift was one of the most stupendous events in geological 

 history. In some way, by a cause as wide as the continent, and I 

 3 



may say, as wide nearly as the world, stones of all sizes to immense 

 boulders one to two thousand tons in weight, were transported, along 

 with gravel and sand, over hills and valleys, deeply scratching the 

 rocks across which they travelled. 



Although the ocean had full play in the many earlier ages, and an 

 uneasy earth at tim3S must have produced great convulsions, in no 

 rock strata, from the first to the last do we find imbedded stones or 

 boulders at all comparable in magnitude with the immense blocks that 

 were lifted and borne along for miles in the Drift period. 



Much doubt must remain about the origin of the drift until the 

 courses of the stones and scratches about mountain ridges and valleys 

 shall have been exactly ascertained. The general course from the 

 north is admitted ; but the special facts proving or disproving a degree 

 of dependence on the configuration of the land have not yet been 

 sufiiciently studied. 



One theory, the most prevalent, supposes a deep submergence over 

 New England and the north and west, even to a depth of four or five 

 thousand feet, and conceives of icebergs as floating along the blocks 

 of stone and at bottom, scratching the rocks. Another, that of the 

 Professors Rogers, objects to such a submergence, and attributes the 

 result to an incursion of the ocean from the north, in consequence of 

 an earthquake movement beneath the Arctic Seas. 



The idea of a submergence is objected to, on the ground that the 

 sea has left no proofs of its presence by fossils or seashore terraces or 

 beaches. Unless the whole continent were submerged, of which there 

 is no evidence whatever, there must have been in the Post-tertiary 

 period an east and west line of seashore, say across New Jersey, 

 Pennsylvania, Southern Ohio, and other States west, or still further 

 south ; and yet no such seashore marks now exist to trace its outline 

 — although the ocean must have been a portion of the same that had 

 laid up the cretaceous and tertiary beds all along the coasts, and ;n 

 fad already contained the oysters and clams and many other_specie3 of 

 Molluscs which now exist. 



Can it be that, contrary to all the ways of the past, such a grand 

 submergence as this view supposes, placing New England 4,000 feet 

 nnder water, could have transpired without a seashore record ? Very 

 many have replied in the afiirmative ; and one able advocate of this 

 view, who sees no diSiculty in the total absence of seashore terraces or 

 fossils at all levels above the Laurentian beds, finds in the succeeding 

 epochs seashore accumulations in all the terraces of our rivers. Why 

 this wonderful contrast ? What withheld the waves from acting like 

 waves in the former case, and gave unbounded license in the latter t 



This much then seems plain, that the evidence, although negative, 

 is very much like positive proof, that the land was not beneath the sea 

 to the extent the explanation of the drift phenomena would require. 



There are other objections to this view of submergence. If North 

 America was submerged from the southern boundary line of the drift 

 far into the Arctic regions, this would have made a much warmer 

 climate for the continent than now ; and if only half way, then there 

 is another east and west shore line to be traced out before the fact of 

 the submergence can be admitted. 



Again, we know how the ice, while yet a glacier or along a shore of 

 cliffs, (for all bergs were once glaciers,) may receive upon it heavy 

 blocks of stone, even a thousand tons in weight, and bear them off to 

 distant regions, as now happens in the North Atlantic ; but we have 

 no reason to believe that the massy foot of a berg could pick up such 

 blocks, and carry them twenty miles to drop them again ; and hence 

 the short distance of travel would seem to prove that the bergs were 

 made at that short distance to the north, and this implies the existence 

 there of glacier valleys, and a glacier theory. 



But without considering other difficulties, I pass to the inquiry 

 whetlier the lands, if not submerged, were at any higher level than 

 now ? 



There is evidence of a striking character that the regions or coasts 

 over the higher latitudes, in both the northern and southern hemi- 

 spheres, were much elevated above their present condition. TVaflords 

 or deep coast channels, scores of miles long, that cut up the coast of 

 Norway and Britain, of Maine, Nova Scotia, and Greenland, of Western 

 America from Puget's Sound north, of Southern South America from 

 Chiloe south, of Van Diemen's Land and other southern islands — aro 

 all valleys that could not have been scooped out when filled with tho 

 ocean's water as now. That could have been formed only when the 

 land in those liigh latitudes, north and south, was elevated till their 

 profound depths were nearly dry. Whether this elevation was in the 

 period of the Post-tertiary has not been precisely ascertained. But as 

 they are proofs of a north-and-south system of o.scillation3, the same 

 that was in action in tho drift epoch, and as tho cold that such a change 



