GLACIAL DRIFT ON THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS. 
7 
hour visits to locate if possible like evidences of glaciation on the 
other islands touched by the **Lady While the results 
obtained at the other points visited were less convincing than 
those at Amherst, they lend strength to the opinion that glacial 
drift occurs on all the islands. 
AMHERST ISLAND. 
At “Fish town point/’ where the pier extends out into Am- 
herst harbour, a cross section of the cliffs shows deeply decayed, 
buff-weathering sandstone overlain by an unstratified sheet of 
red sand and a thin coating of wind-blown sand. The red deposit 
contains pebbles of brownish black diabase, the common intru- 
sive rock of the Magdalens, and more rarely of quartz. The 
origin of it is somewhat obscure at first glance. 
A few hundred yards away, however, behind the fish houses 
a cliff which faces over the “basin” exhibits a section of a much 
thicker deposit of red sand which here has the characteristics of 
glacial till. The deposit is about IS feet thick, and rests on the 
buff-weathering grey sandstone already mentioned. In the red 
matrix is an abundance of pebbles which average from 2 to 5 
inches in diameter but include a few boulders of much larger size. 
Approximately 80 to 85 per cent of the stones are of local deriva- 
tion — that is, not from the underlying sandstone, but from the 
diabase hills of the islands; the other 15 or 20 per cent include 
grey and white quartzite, vein quartz, feldspar porphyry, and 
coarse biotite granite. Many of these stones are round; but 
in general there is as large a proportion of angular and subangular 
stones as is usual in glacial till. Several of the diabase pebbles 
collected during a ten minute search show distinct striae on 
their broader faces, with a pronounced tendency to parallelism 
with the long axis of the pebble. In the opinion of the writer 
these are ice worn (Plate I). Except at the top, where 3 
or 4 feet of eolian sand covers this red boulder clay, there is no 
indication of bedding in the deposit. The stones stand in all 
sorts of positions, and in thorough disorder. The sandstone 
beneath, where exposed, seems to be too deeply decayed to 
furnish glacial striae. A few of the pebbles at the base of the 
