1872.] 69 [Perry. 
ment washed, by the ocean. In case this beach were a long time in 
forming, and it is clear that it was,—and were it, during all this 
time, bathed by the sea, as seems to be claimed,—there must have 
been other marine deposits laid down in the neighborhood, and, in 
fact, in all those portions of the country which were then beneath 
the deep. Meanwhile we find no traces of any such deposit. On 
this point, indeed, there is room for an emphatic statement. As the 
advocates of the iceberg theory assume and imply that, during the 
olacial times, there was such a depression of the land that the sea 
laved the highest of the ancient beaches; in fact that it covered, as 
some would maintain, the most elevated places containing polished 
or striated drift surfaces, it may be remarked that the supposed sub- 
mergence is only a guess; for no unquestioned relic of the ocean, 
and not an iota of positive evidence have been yet adduced in any 
wise showing that the country at large was at all submerged during 
the ice period. As no marine remains cotemporaneous with its de- 
position have been thus far found in the drift at a distance from the 
existing sea coast, the whole matter is seen to rest on a basis which is 
purely hypothetical, and not merely on this, which might be well 
enough, if there were no counter evidence, but on one which has in. 
its way a host of objections, of which there is not time even for a 
brief enumeration. 
If such be a true statement of facts, so far as it goes, and it is sub- 
stantially what present knowledge warrants us in affirming, it must be 
evident that there is comparatively little, so far as is yet known, to 
recommend or authorize the adoption of the iceberg hypothesis, as it 
has been usually advocated. In this view of the matter it is not at 
all surprising that, in his last paper, Prof. Dana seems entirely to re- 
ject it, and that he advocates another explanation, which many re- 
gard as in essential harmony with the facts and comparatively free 
from objection. 
§ 3. The Glaciation of the Region. 
As some of the more important facts are now beiore us in outline, 
—as it has become evident that we cannot readily, or at all reasona- 
bly, account for the manifold phenomena by the supposed presence of 
ice in the form of bergs,—we are to look at the subject from another 
point of view; in other words, at the agency of ice, in the shape of 
vast masses, perhaps of almost continental extent. Because one ex- 
