TKANSPORTATION OF BOWLDERS BY FLOE-ICE. 1 73 



watched the progress south of this enormous expanse of 

 floating ice, the stream being not less than a thousand 

 miles long and over a hundred miles in breadth, more 

 or less interrupted, of course, by " leads " and open water. 

 It will be remembered that in former years the " float- 

 ing-ice " theory prevailed, geologists almost universally be- 

 lieving that the polishing and grooving of the rocks and 

 distribution of drift or diluvium were produced by floe-ice 

 passing over the submerged land. This theory has been 

 almost wholly abandoned, though south of the edge of 

 the great continental glacier floating-ice may have trans-- 

 ported raorainal material southward and dropped it over 

 the Middle and Southern States. It was therefore with 

 much interest that I watched day after day the effects 

 upon the coast of such a mass of ice as beset us for a 

 period of nearly a month in summer. This immense 

 body of floating-ice, as we have elsewhere stated,* seemed 

 directly to produce but little alteration in the appear- 

 ance of the rocks on the coast ; in fact, the only imme- 

 diate effects of waves and shore-ice action were observed 

 in the Gulf of St. Lawrence at Little Mecatina Island, 

 where there is no true arctic floe-ice. At Domino Har- 

 bor, as well as the harbor we were now in, the rocks 

 had been disrupted, and the land descended in rock- 

 terraces to the water's edge, and to a point at least two 

 hundred and fifty feet below it. This singular appearance 

 I attributed to the action of the ice-fort, or winter-ice, 

 which has been well described by Dr. Kane. Now 

 why should not the floe-ice while in motion along 

 the shore have ground down the jagged and angular 



* Observations on the Glacial Phenomena of Labrador and Maine, Memoirs 

 of the Boston Society of Natural History, i, pt. ii. Boston, 1867. 



