98 B" GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OP CANADA. 



their south-eastern parts, while the north-western slopes are compara- 

 tively rough. These traces precisely resemble those found in the track 

 of the Strait of Georgia glacier near Victoria, and show that here, as 

 there, the ice rode over the low extremity of the island. The seaward 

 margin of the continental shore is here also low, and the width of the 

 glacier of Queen Charlotte Sound can scarcely have been less than 

 twenty or twenty-five miles, though it may have been much greater. 

 Traces of glaciation were also seen on the rocks, in a few places on 

 Quatsino Inlet opposite Beaver Harbour on the west coast of Vancouver 

 Island, and it appears probable that the ice may have passed westward 

 over the low intervening country. 

 Deposits of On Cormorant Island, and also on Harwood, Mary, Hernando and 



Savary Islands, situated between Vancouver Island and the mainland, 

 hard regularly bedded deposits of sandy clay and sand occur, forming in 

 some places cliffs two hundred feet in height. Clays containing 

 boulders probably underlie these, as erratics in great numbers are 

 frequently scattered on the beaches above which the cliffs rise. Sim- 

 ilar deposits are shown at Cape Mudge, Cape Lazo and elsewhere, and 

 resemble those of the islands in the southern part of the Strait of 

 Georgia. They probably represent the time immediately subsequent 

 to the retreat of a great mass of glacier-ice. True boulder clay was 

 noticed in the bank of the Sable Eiver near Comox. 

 Possiiiferous _ In a cutting on the colliery railway between Nanaimo and the 

 mo. Chase Eiver Mine, hard sandstone rocks have been bared, and show 



heavy and well-marked glaciation running parallel to the general trend 

 of the coast and Strait of Georgia, in such a way as to show that the 

 entire width of the strait must have been filled with ice, and that no 

 local glaciation, — which would be radiant from the mountains of the 

 district, — will account for the facts. In a clay which is found to rest in 

 the hollows of these glaciated rocks, marine shells like those formerly 

 obtained in the clays at Victoria are found. The elevation above the 

 sea level of the place where they were seen is about seventy feet. The 

 species represented in a small collection are : — 



Saocicava rugosa. 

 Mya truncata. 

 JJeda fossa. 

 The last named is still found in waters of moderate depth on the coast. 

 The two first are shells of very wide range, and are not confined to 

 arctic waters. 



Conclusions, and General Remarks on Glaciation. 



There is good reason to believe, from facts observed in the interior 

 of British Columbia, that at least two periods of extensive glaciation 



