282 Field and Forest Rambles. 



portion of the province diagonally, and in which the eastern 

 and western chains of the Schoodic lakes exist. Now, if float- 

 ing ice in a shallow sea picked up these masses of rock, they 

 must have been deposited very soon afterwards ; moreover, 

 from the all but universal rounding off and planing of their 

 surfaces, they must have also been subjected to constant 

 friction ; again, bearing in view similar appearances observed 

 in the boulders of the glaciers of the Alps and Himalayas, 

 I could fancy that these boulders had been subjected to the 

 immense weight and force of a glacier moving over a rocky 

 bottom, and that thus they got planed and rounded. Now 

 if icebergs were equal to do the same, it seems curious to me 

 how the scorings should be so excessively numerous and regular 

 on the rocks, and how, I repeat, the boulders were picked up 

 and suddenly deposited. Lastly, in attempting to do justice 

 to both theories, with reference to the Boulder Clay and 

 Drift, there seems to me no exception to take to the ex- 

 planation of their origin and deposition by one or the other, 

 only that if we admit an arctic current steadily setting in from 

 the north, there should be more signs of sorting or stratifica- 

 tion of both than are usually observed, at least inland. As 

 to the river terraces and their origin ; being localized, and 

 often, as at Fredericton, not equally defined on both banks, 

 we cannot, I once more repeat, argue positively whether 

 these are the results of oscillations of level during the first 

 upheaval of the rocks in which they exist, or whether they 

 have been formed during subsequent movements connected 

 with the Glacial epoch, or by means of fluviatile or marine 

 currents. Doubtless more facts and a closer study of Glacial 

 phenomena are required before any positive conclusion can 

 be safely arrived at. At the same time it would be doing 

 scant justice to the labours of those who have devoted their 

 best energies to the special study of surface geology, to over- 

 look the views of the latest advocates of the iceberg and 

 land-ice theories ; and feeling that every one has a right to 



