the features of the glacial age still persist.[156] [156] I may refer here to the recent researches of Dr. G. M. Dawson, Mr. R. Chalmers, Mr. McConnell and Dr. Ells. The writer of these pages has, ever since the publication of the first edition of his "Acadian Geology,"[157] steadily resisted the more extreme views of glaciation, and has opposed the southward progress of the great continental glacier. Though, figuratively speaking, overborne and pressed back in the course of its extension, he has now, like those primitive men who are imagined in the post-glacial age to have followed up the retreat of the ice, the pleasure of seeing the once formidable continental glacier broken up into great local glaciers on the mountain ranges separated by intervening areas of submergence. [157] 1855. The questions relating to this subject are too numerous and varied for treatment here. The question of the causes of the great lowering of temperature in the glacial age I shall leave for consideration in the next chapter, and merely state here that I believe changes of distribution of sea and land and of ocean currents are sufficient to account for all the refrigeration of which there is good evidence. I content myself with a comparison of the glacial phenomena of Mont Blanc and of the Gulf of St. Lawrence from my own observation,[158] and some general deductions as to glacier possibilities. [158] Published in 1867. A scientific voyager carries with him a species of questioning peculiar to himself. Not content with vacantly gazing at the sea, scrutinizing his fellow passengers, noting the changes of the weather and the length of the day's run, he recognises in the sea one of the great features of the earth, and questions it daily as to its present and its past The present features of the sea include much of surpassing interest, but the questions which relate to its origin and early history are still more attractive. Some of these questions are likely to interest a voyager from Canada entering the Atlantic by one of its greatest tributaries, the St. Lawrence. In doing so, we approach the ocean not at a right angle, but along a line only slightly inclined to its western side, and we find ourselves in a broad estuary or trough, having on its north-western side rugged hills of old crystalline rocks, the Laurentian, ridged up in great folds or earth waves parallel to the river. On the south-east or right-hand side we have a lower barrier of earth waves composed of sedimentary rocks somewhat later in date, but still geologically very ancient. We are thus introduced to a remarkable feature of the west side of the North Atlantic, namely, that its border is made up of very old rocks folded into mountain ridges thrown up at an ancient period, and approximately parallel to the coast. The Lower St. Lawrence occupies a furrow between two of these ridges.