When the students of glacial action first began the great task of interpreting these records, they were led to suppose that the amount of rock cutting which was done by the ice was very great. Observing what goes on, in the manner we have noted, beneath a valley glacier such as those of Switzerland, they saw that the ice work went on rapidly, and concluded that if the ice remained long at work in a region it must do a vast deal of erosion. They were right in a part of their premises, but, as we shall see, probably in another part wrong. Looking carefully over the field where the ice has operated, we note that, though at first sight the area appears to have lost all trace of its preglacial river topography, this aspect is due mainly to the irregular way in which the glacial waste is laid down. Close study shows us that we may generally trace the old stream valleys down to those which were no larger than brooks. It is true that these channels are generally and in many places almost altogether filled in with rubbish, but a close study of the question has convinced the writer, and this against a previous view, that the amount of erosion in New England and Canada, where the work was probably as great as anywhere, has not on the average exceeded a hundred feet, and probably was much less than that amount. Even in the region north of Lake Ontario, over which the ice was deep and remained for a long time, the amount of erosion is singularly small. Thus north of Kingston the little valleys in the limestone rocks which were cut by the preglacial streams, though somewhat encumbered with drift, remain almost as distinct as they are on similar strata in central Kentucky, well south of the field which the ice occupied. In fact, the ice sheet appears to have done the greatest part of its work and to have affected the surface most in the belt of country a few hundred miles in width around the edges of the sheet. It was to be expected that in a continental glacier, as in those of mountain valleys, the most of the _debris_ should be accumulated about the margin where the materials dropped from the ice. But why the cutting action should be greatest in that marginal field is not at first sight clear. To explain this and other features as best we may, we shall now consider the probable history of the great ice march in advance and retreat, and then take up the conditions which brought about its development and its disappearance.