Robert Bell

On Glacial Phenomena in Canada

Introductory Note .—In the following paper, Canada means more than the narrow strip along the eastern part of the northern border of the United States, with which the name was once familiarly associated in the minds of the citizens of the latter country. Leaving out Alaska, Canada now means the northern half of this continent. The extent of the area in the northern hemisphere which has undergone glaciation during the drift period has now been pretty well ascertained, and the greater part of it proves to lie within the Dominion of Canada. Considering this fact and also the diversity in topography and climate presented by a country which stretches from the temperate zone to the north pole, it must be admitted that we Canadians have a splendid field for the study of the ancient glacial phenomena. In 1863 the writer prepared the chapter on surface geology in the “Geology of . . .

Evidences of northeasterly differential rising of the land along Bell River

Introduction. It is generally admitted by geologists that a differential rising of the land toward the northeast has taken place in Pleistocene times over a great breadth of North America, extending from the Canadian northwest territories to the New England states. The unequal elevation of the land has been demonstrated by Tyrrell in Manitoba, Canada, and, among others, by Chamberlin, McGee, and Leverett in the western United States, by Lawson around lake Superior, by Spencer and Taylor in Ontario, Canada, and by Gilbert. Spencer, Upham, Fairchild, and others all the way from Ohio to New England. There is the plainest evidence that at a very recent geological period the land has been rising all around Hudson bay and in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions of the Dominion as well as on the Atlantic coast of British North America. It would be, a priori , unreasonable to suppose that such an extensive . . .