46 The America)) Geologist. July, 1896 
gether, in convenient form for study and reference, his very extensive 
observations of the glaciers and ice-sheet of Greenland, and his conclu- 
sions on their significance for explanation of the methods of origin of 
the Pleistocene drift. w. u. 
Geological Sio'vey of Canada, Report on the Surface Geology of 
eastern Neio Brutisuu'ck, northirentern Nora Scutia, ami a 2X>rtio)i of 
Prince Edira)'d Island. By Robert Chalmers. Pages 149, with five 
maps and four plates from photographs [the tidal bore on the Petitco- 
diac river, N. B., and three views of glacial strife, two of which are 
ascribed to floating ice]: forming part M of the Annual Report, vol. vii, 
new series : Ottawa, 1895. Price, 25 cents. The field work on the areas 
here mapped and described in detail was done in the four years 1890 to 
1893 : Vmt during many previous years the author has been engaged in 
similar studies of nearly the entire province of New Brunswick, with 
parts of the adjacent provinces. In 1885 and 1886 he first published the 
theory of the glaciation of the eastern part of Canada, sovith of the St. 
Lawrence river, which is now found by this further field work to afford 
the best explanation of all the facts observed. At the period of maxi- 
mum extension of the North American ice-sheet there was a general 
radial movement of the icefields enveloping New Brunswick, northward 
and eastward into the St. Lawrence estuary and gulf, and southeast- 
ward into the Bay of Fundy and the Atlantic ocean. The easterly flow- 
ing ice reached across Northumberland strait and over Prince Edward 
Island ; but the Magdalen islands, in the south central part of the Gulf 
of St. Lawrence, were not glaciated, as was ascertained by Richardson 
nearly twenty years ago, his observations being now fully confirmed. 
The ice covering Nova Scotia is thought by Chalmers to have been 
entirely accumulated by its own snowfall, with no inflow across the 
Chignecto isthmus : and similarly the ice-sheet enveloping Newfound- 
land was dovibtless chiefly, if not wholly, produced by the local snowfall. 
Between these ice-sheets of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, connected 
respectively with New Brunswick and Labrador by continuous icefields, 
bvit receiving from them probably little or no glacial flow or drift, lay 
an almost enclosed, lower, and warmer driftless area, including the 
Magdalen islands. The extent of this unglaciated district, although 
now a part of the Gulf of St. Lawrence so that its boundaries cannot be 
determined, may well have equaled or exceeded that of the Wisconsin 
driftless area, with which it seems to be nearly analogous in its topo- 
graphic and climatic causes. It remains in doubt whether the Magda- 
len driftless area was ever entirely enclosed by confluence of the ice- 
sheets which bounded its southern and eastern sides. Since its 
boundaries and outlet are covered by the sea, it is far less instructive 
than the driftless area of southwestern Wisconsin and adjoining parts 
of Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois, which is separated from the unglaci- 
ated country on the south by a wide tract of the glacial drift. 
Principally local ice accumulation on the southeastern provinces of 
Canada, and its radiating eastward outflow, well demonstrated by 
