po . ae 4 te 
Mesozoic and Cenozoic Geology and Paleontology. 29 
4, The Post-pliocene deposits of Canada, in their fossil remains and 
general character, indicate a gradual elevation from a state of depres- 
sion, which on the evidence of fossils must have extended to at least 
500 feet, and on that of far-traveled bowlders to several times that 
amount; while there is nothing but the bowlder clay to represent the 
previous subsidence, and nothing whatever to represent the supposed 
previous ice-clad state of the land, except the scratches on the rock 
surfaces, which must have been caused by the same agency which de- 
posited the bowlder clay. 
5. The peat deposits, with fir roots, found below the bowlder clay 
in Cape Breton, the remains of plants and land snails in the marine 
clays of the Ottawa, and the shells of the St. Lawrence clays and 
sands, show that the sea at the period in question had nearly the tem- 
perature of the present Arctic currents of our coasts, and that the 
land was not covered with ice, but supported a vegetation similar to 
that of Labrador and the north shore of the St. Lawrence at present. 
This evidence refers not to the later period of the Mammoth and the 
‘Mastodon, when the re-elevation was perhaps nearly complete, but to 
the earlier period contemporaneous with, or immediately following the 
supposed glacier period. In my former papers on the Post-pliocene of 
the St. Lawrence, I have shown that the change of climate involved is 
not greater than that which may have been due to the subsidence of 
land, and to the change of the course of the Arctic current, actually 
proved by the deposits themselves. 
It has long been known to geologists, that in northeastern America, 
two main directions of striation of rock surfaces occur, from north- 
east to southwest, and from northwest to southeast; and that locally 
the directions vary from these to north and south, and east and west. 
It would seem that the dominant direction in the valley of the St. 
Lawrence, along the high lands to the north of it, and across western 
New York, is northeast and southwest; and that there is another 
series of scratches running nearly at right angles to the former, across 
the neck of land between Georgian Bay and Lake Ontario, down the 
valley of the Ottawa, and across parts of the eastern townships, con- 
necting with the prevalent south and southeast striation, which occurs 
in the valleys of the Connecticut and Lake Champlain, and elsewhere 
in New England, as well as in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. 
What were the determining conditions of these two courses, and were 
they contemporaneous or distinct in time? The first point to be set- 
tled in answering these questions is the direction of the force which 
