72 
Discovery of Stone Implements in 
[January, 
If the northern end of the Atlantic was so occupied with 
ice as this theory requires, the effects ought to be similar 
on the west coast of Europe and the east coast of America, 
which on this view form the left and right banks of the same 
great valley. I restrict my argument for the present, on the 
American side, to the country lying east of the Appalachians, 
but I hope at some future time to show that a similar ex- 
planation of the glacial phenomena west of that range is 
not improbable ; this I cannot do now, as the preliminary 
steps of the discussion would occupy a greater length than 
the whole of this paper. 
Owing to the influence of the Gulf Stream the ice occu- 
pying the bed of the Atlantic would probably extend much 
farther on the American side than on the European. 
Flowing down there — much influenced by the shape of the 
ocean bed, still more by the areas of greatest precipitation 
as affedted by the advance of the ice itself, and not necessarily, 
nor even probably, thickest next the coast line and south of 
Cape Cod mostly distant from it — the ice, I think, reached 
so far at least as the 37th parallel of latitude. I suppose 
that the mass of ice had been increasing as it advanced 
southward, in consequence of the enormously greater preci- 
pitation not having yet been counterbalanced by the also 
increased waste from liquefaction, and that it flowed in upon 
the American coast somewhere south of Chesapeake Bay, 
and blocked up the eastern drainage as far as that point. 
Thus I think was produced the submergence of all the lower 
parts of the country. To what height the flood reached I 
have not information to guide me, but the water must have 
been deep to permit the tranquil deposition of the brown 
clays that cover much of the country, and the flotation of 
icebergs from the north, bearing the great rocks that were 
thus distributed over the land. I have found no evidence 
in North America of any great debacle, and the waters do 
not appear ever to have been suddenly and tumultuously 
discharged. In consequence, there has not been there the 
same mixing together of remains of different ages as occurred 
with us when the middle sands and gravels were spread out, 
and the relation of the beds containing the relics of pre- 
diluvial man and the pre-diluvial mammals to the other 
glacial deposits is more clearly defined. The more gradual 
and interrupted subsidence of the water is, however, marked 
by a series of terraces in the valleys. Excepting for this, the 
parallel between the series of events that occurred in the 
Glacial period, in Western Europe and North-eastern Ame- 
rica, is complete. There is the same evidence of the advance 
