level. I may not have the same detailed evidence about all 
the American States ; but_, if water flowed over^the highest 
mountains in Massachusetts, we know that it filled all the 
valleys, and covered the uplands, of the other States that were 
at a lesser altitude than the Massachusetts mountains. 
Principal Dawson, of Montreal, referring to the great sub- 
sidence, says, Lower levels of the continents were covered 
with ice-laden water, and the higher regions were occupied 
with permanent snow and glaciers; 4,000 feet or more in 
elevation went under water. Then there was a gradual, 
though intermittent, elevation. The glacial age/^ he remarks, 
proved fatal to a large proportion of the land-life of the 
previous periods.^^ On the western side of the Rocky 
Mountains,^^ Professor Archibald Geikie says, in the July 
number of Macmillan^ s Magazine, that ^^over thousands 
of square miles the strata remain practically unchanged 
from their original horizontal position ; that the country has 
not been under the sea for a vast succession of geological 
periods. It has not been buried, like so much of Xorthern 
Europe, and North-eastern America, under a thick cover 
of ice-borne clays and gravels.^^ The land on the west of 
the Rocky Mountains may not have been submerged to the 
extent of bringing those parts under water, but Professor A. 
Geikie, when descending Uintah Mountains, on reaching the 
valley-bottom, found abundant traces of vanished glaciers in 
the form of perfect crescent-shaped moraine mounds,* and 
‘^on these w’’ere strewn huge blocks of red sandstone, borne 
of old on the surface of the ice from far crags on the sky- 
line,^^ and this far below the altitude where bushes now bear 
ripe fruit, which reminded the travellers of the wild goose- 
berries at home. 
17. Darwin says, Throughout a large part of the United 
States erratic boulders and scored rocks plainly reveal a 
former cold period.^^t 
18. Agassiz corroborated the evidence already given of the 
surface of North America, as well as that of the North of 
Europe, being covered by the sea, after the ice that carried 
the erratics had melted away ; to which he adds that it was 
not until after this period that incontestable traces of the 
species of animals now living were to be found.^^J 
19. And, if we travel larther south to Central America, the 
same kind of evidence there awaits us. The late Mr. Thos. Belt, 
* Macmillan^ Magazine, “ In Wyoming,” p. 239. 
+ Origin of /Species, sixth edition, p. 330. . 
X Principles of Zoology, p. 236. 
