348 THE GEOLOGY OF THE LABRADOR COAST. 



earlier Quaternary or "glacial" formation, from which 

 few fossils have been taken, and those purely arctic in 

 character, and the more recent beds, " post-glacial," 

 resting upon them, containing a great influx of boreal or 

 sub-arctic and some Lusitanico-Mediterranean species — 

 does not seem so distinctly marked in northeastern 

 America as in Europe. In southern England the able 

 researches of Mr. Searles V. Wood, Jun., enable this 

 writer to " arrive at the conclusion that the widespread 

 bowlder clay of England is wholly distinct from the 

 older, but partially developed drift of the Cromer coast. 

 That conclusion was arrived at by the minute examina- 

 tion of more than eight thousand square miles of the 

 eastern portion of England, and the grounds for it were 

 submitted to geologists in a detailed map of the drift 

 beds over the whole of that area, with copious sections. 

 It was thus that I acquired the opinion which induces 

 me to deny, as I do, ' that we have yet any evidence of 

 any general submergence at the incoming of the glacial 

 period, far less of repeated oscillations of submergence 

 and emergence.' . . . Now although I have endeavored 

 to show that on the east coast of Englaad four oscilla- 

 tions of climate have occurred since the incidence of the 

 glacial period, viz. : first, the extreme cold of the Cromer 

 drift when the country except a part of Norfolk was 

 land ; second, the ameliorated climate of the sand and 

 gravel series, which overlies that drift unconformably, 

 and partially underlies the bowlder clay ; third, the re- 

 turn of cold with the extensive submergence which in- 

 troduced .the widespread formation of bowlder clay ; 

 and fourth, the return to sand and gravel conditions, 

 with the elevation and denudation of that clay and the 



