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Mesozoic and Cenozoic Geology and Paleontology. 139 
with difficulty that any two sets are found exactly agreeing in their 
course, though as in Maine they conform to the direction of the valleys. 
The greater part of Massachusetts and Connecticut is covered with the 
drift sand, gravel, bowlders or clay, and the grooves, furrows and 
scratches upon the surface of the rocks in place, have a general south- 
erly direction, though varying with the contour of the valleys to a 
southeasterly or southwesterly course. At the Island of New York, 
there is abundant evidence that a current swept over it from the north- 
west to the southeast. The furrows are most strongly marked on the 
northwestern slopes of the hills, and least so om the southeastern. In 
many instances they are very distinct on the western and northwestern 
slopes, extending to the highest points of the rock, but no traces are to 
be seen on the eastern and southeastern slopes, although both slopes 
are equally exposed. The striz are most numerous in the middle part 
of the island, somewhat less in the western, and least in the eastern. 
It appears that the current was deflected southward by some force, at 
an angle to its course in the middle part of the island. Throughout 
all this region south of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the St. Lawrence 
valley, we have in the course of the striz, and the distribution of clay, 
sand, gravel, and bowlders, the evidence of an overflow of the whole 
country, except the higher hills and mountains, and the evidence that 
this overflow was by subsidence of the coast, and that the Arctic cur- 
rent, instead of leaving the coast on approaching the mouth of the 
Gulf, as it does now, flowed into the Gulf and across the depressed 
New England area, transporting its fields of ice, which grounded upon 
the northern slopes of hills and mountains, and rubbed the rocks in 
the valleys and plains wherever the surface soil and subserial accumu- 
lations were swept off by the grinding weight of a mass driven by a 
current through water too shallow to float it. However, the evidence 
of submergence does not rest alone upon these appearances, but stands 
upon the incontestible ground of paleontology. 
Throughout nearly all this region the striated rocks are succeeded 
by fossiliferous, bowlder-bearing, marine clays and sands. In the 
Gaspe peninsula ocean terraces and stratified clay containing marine 
testacea occur at the height of 600 feet above the sea. Inthe St. 
Lawrence valley, the valley of the Ottawa, Champlain region of 
Vermont, and over the triangular area of 9,000 square miles extending 
from Ottawa to Lake Champlain, the marine fossils occur in the 
bowlder clay at all elevations as high as 500 feet or more above the 
level of the ocean. The fossiliferous marine clays and sands form a 
