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Mesozoic and Cenozoic Geology and Paleontology. 3l 
tic current would cling to the Northern land, or be thrown so rapidly 
to the west that its direct action might not reach such summits. 
Nor would I exclude altogether the action of glaciers in eastern 
America, though I must dissent from any view which would assign to 
them the principal agency in our glacial phenomena. Under a condi- 
tion of the continent in which only its higher peaks were above the 
water, the air would be so moist, and the temperature so low, that per- 
manent ice may have clung about-mountains in the temperate latitudes. 
The striation itself shows that there must have been extensive glaciers, 
as now, in the extreme Arctic regions. Yet I think, that most of the 
alleged instances must be founded on error, and that old sea-beaches 
have been mistaken for moraines. I have failed to find even in our 
higher mountains any distinct sign of glacier action, though the action 
of the ocean breakers is visible almost to their summits; and though 
I have observed in Canada and Nova Scotia many old sea-beaches, 
eravel-ridges, and lake-margins, I have seen nothing that could fairly 
be regarded as the work of glaciers. The so-called moraines, in so 
far as my observation extends, are more probably shingle beaches and 
bars, old coast-lines loaded with bowlders, trains of bowlders or “ ozars.”’ 
Most of them convey to my mind the impression of ice-action along a 
slowly subsiding coast, forming successive deposits of stones in the shal- 
low water, and burying them in clay and smaller stones as the depth 
increased. These deposits were again modified during emergence, 
when the old ridges were sometimes bared by denudation, and new ones 
heaped up. 
We now have, in all, exclusive of doubtful forms, about one hundred 
species of marine invertebrates, from the Post-pliocene clays of the 
St. Lawrence valley. All, except four or five species, belonging to the 
older or deep. water part of the deposit, are known as living shells of 
the Arctic or boreal regions ofthe Atlantic. About half of the species 
are fossil in the Post-pliocene of Great Britain. The great majority 
are now living in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and on the neighboring 
coasts;-and more especially on the north side of the gulf and the coast 
of Labrador. In so far, then, as marine life is concerned, the modern 
period in this country is connected with that of the bowlder clay by 
an unbroken chain of animal existence, These deposits in Lower 
Canada afford no indications of the terrestrial fauna ; but the remains 
of Hlephus primigenius, in beds of similar age in Upper Canada, show 
that during the period in question, great changes occurred among the 
animals of the land ; and we may hope to find similar evidences else- 
