222 Field and Forest Rambles. 



spring they keep in the tracks of the rafts, crossing the lakes 

 as if following them (the rafts) to the debouchure." 



One of the most picturesque portions of the western 

 Schoodic region is Grand Lake. This noble sheet of water is 

 broken here and there by islets, and surrounded, even to the 

 waters edge, with forests of pine and hard wood, whilst its 

 bottom is covered with granitic boulders, which, in combination 

 with drift, are spread far and wide among the arboreal vegeta- 

 tion around. Great banks of gravel run along the side of the 

 effluent stream, where a slate formation, possibly Silurian, 

 has a dip scarcely less than the perpendicular, and a strike 

 risrht across the mouth of the Grand Lake Stream. The 

 slate, again, is flanked on the lake side by syenitic rocks, 

 which form the basin of this and the other lakes. The hypo- 

 thesis that many lake basins have been brought about by the 

 friction of solid masses of ice during the Glacial Period, 

 requires, when applied to the Schoodic and other New Bruns- 

 wick lake reservoirs, that the glacial erosion should have been 

 enormous to have excavated these vast troughs in solid 

 granite, even supposing the existence of highlands in their 

 vicinity from which the frozen masses received their momenta, 

 which however in this case are entirely absent, besides the fact 

 that lake basins are wanting in other situations where the beds 

 are composed of much softer rocks. That these lacustrine 

 depressions may have resulted from phenomena in connection 

 with previous aqueous erosion, and irregular or violent oscil- 

 lations of level during periods of upheaval and depression, 

 and moreover that the pre-glacial deposits existed at the time 

 when the glaciers first passed down the valleys and were 

 removed by them, are to me apparently legitimate deductions 

 when the facts in connection with the strata and surface 

 geology are duly weighed. But speculations with reference to 

 this remarkable epoch in the earth's history must of necessity 

 be at variance with one another, more especially when one set 



