BRITISH COLUMBIA AND ADJACENT REGIONS. 



285 



and they could be found still higher but for the degrading action of 

 the climate. The rapid melting of the snow, followed by freezing, 

 and slipping of the ice then formed, produced well-defined ice- 

 scratches in a very short time. 



Prof. Boyd Dawkins said that he had studied the glacial phe- 

 nomena in America, though he had not been so far north ; and, 

 so far as he could form an opinion, that northern area appeared to 

 have been a great area of dispersal of ice. In the Western and 

 Pacific States, however, there was no evidence of a great ice-sheet, 

 only a rather larger extension of local glaciers. On the eastern side 

 the southern boundary of the confused glacial deposits, or the 

 drift, passed from the latitude of New Brunswick in a N.W. direc- 

 tion towards the area of the Mississippi, forming a low range of well- 

 marked hills. To the south of this are the " Champlain terraces" 

 and traces of local glaciers on the higher hills. So that in North 

 America there are two great systems of glaciation — one in the 

 such as Dr. Dawson had described ; and another in the ET.E. region, 

 apparently pointing towards Greenland and Labrador. 



