HIGHWOOD RIVER TO CALGARY. 51 



posits of rolled gravel, but no sections of any depth occur. The extent 

 of this country where crossed is about six miles. It is the only tract 

 met with in this entire region which in any degree simulates the characters 

 usually assumed as morainic. Nearly all the stones are from the west, 

 but a very few Laurentian boulders are seen. 



At the north end of the railway bridge over Fish creek a cutting has 

 been made in pale grayish yellow boulder-clay, in which most of the 

 stones are well rounded (though some pieces of Rocky Mountain lime- 

 stone are striated) and all are of western origin. Laurentian boulders 

 are here, however, not uncommon on the surface at elevations of 3,400 

 to 3,500 feet. 



The higher parts of a wide plain, through the center of which the Bow 

 valley is trenched, in the vicinity of Pine creek, have a level of about 

 3,500 feet. 



Between Fish creek and Calgary, at heights of 3,400 to 3,500 feet, Lau- 

 rentian boulders are found in increasing numbers. Some of them are 

 several feet in diameter, and they are scattered over the surface appar- 

 ently in association with deposits overlying the boulder-clay. 



Sections in Bow River Valley. 



At Calgary we reach Bow river, which has in the introductory pages 

 of this paper been described as the second great avenue of approach to 

 the mountains at low levels and the northernmost in the region here con- 

 sidered. Following the plan already adopted in the case of the Belly 

 and Oldman rivers, some notice will now be given of observations made 

 along the Bow from east to west, or in order, ascending the stream toward 

 the mountains. These observations are chiefly those of Mr McConnell, 

 who in 1890 descended the river in a boat from Morley to the Blackfoot 

 crossing with the special purpose of investigating the superficial deposits, 

 and supplemented this by a critical examination of these deposits at 

 Medicine Hat. Medicine Hat is situated at a distance of about 155 miles 

 from the nearest part of the mountains and about 270 miles from the 

 mountains by a line measured along the general course of the Bow and 

 South Saskatchewan rivers. Mr McConnell writes : 



" The glacial deposits at Medicine Hat consist of light colored com- 

 pact boulder-clays of the ordinary type, but showing in places faint lines 

 of stratification, overlain by stratified sands and underlain by beds of 

 quartzite pebbles^ occasionally cemented into a conglomerate and some- 

 times associated with sands and silts. 



" The line between the material derived from the east and that coming 

 from the west is here drawn at the base of the boulder-clay ; above that 



