280 Field and Forest Rambles. 



not in degree, such' as obtain now in the north-eastern portions 

 of the continent, and allow a fair share of the scorings and 

 deposition of boulders to icebergs and floating ice islands. But 

 to credit the latter with the wide-spread appearances observed 

 even on the surface of New Brunswick, to the complete ex- 

 clusion of, land ice moving over the country, such as obtains 

 in Greenland and elsewhere at the present day, appears to me 

 scarcely in accordance with facts. I do not know a more im- 

 pressive instance of these conditions than is observable at the 

 little country town of St. George, situate at the top of the 

 long fiord of the Magaguadavic River, where I should like to 

 bring the " iceberg theorists," and ask them if they think that 

 floating masses of ice, packed closely with sharp and angular 

 stones and rocks, were of themselves equal to produce the 

 magnificent appearances recorded in unmistakable characters 

 on these ancient Silurian slates. Standing on the bridge above 

 the falls of this river, and looking up the valley, it is no stretch 

 of imagination to such as myself (who have seen far grander 

 phenomena on the Himalayas) to suppose that a vast field of 

 ice at one time poured down the slope into the long fiord below, 

 where it calved its bergs, that floated away laden with rocks 

 and debris. I have seen some of the largest existing glaciers 

 of the Old World, and, judging from what they present to the 

 eye, there appears to my mind nothing so exactly similar as 

 the scorings and scratchings, the roundings-off, surface ac- 

 cumulations — to wit, drift, clays, boulders, and so forth — of 

 this corner of New Brunswick. But, although willing to 

 accord much to floating ice, I cannot attribute these com- 

 plicated and wide-spread appearances to it alone ; nor is it 

 in accordance with the latest researches on glacial action to 

 suppose that the vast accumulations of stratified gravel in the 

 river valleys were sorted by the sea during a period of sub- 

 mergence at the close of the Glacial epoch. That a depression 

 of the land took place at this period there can be no question 

 and that the continent at present is not so elevated above 



