For many years evidence has been accumulating from the Canadian Arctic that changes have taken place in the relative level of land and sea incidental to the growth and dispersion of the Pleistocene ice sheets. The effect of this glaciation was two-fold. The growth of the ice sheets led to a depression of the earth’s crust beneath the glaciated areas and to also resulted in a world-wide lowering of sea level, while the disappearance of the continental ice sheets resulted in an eustatic rise of sea level and an isostatic uplift of the depressed land areas. Flint estimates that the eustatic lowering of sea level during the last glacial maximum was approximately 350 feet.

The geology of Ceylon, as it applies to this study, is basic in concept. The most important factors being the resistance of the rocks to weathering and erosion, and the tectonic activity, both local and regional, to which they have been subjected. These are the factors which, under the tropical conditions obtaining, control to a large extent the development of the various landforms characteristic of the area. In general, the views outlined are those at present accepted by the geologists working in the area. No radically new ideas with respect to rock type, lithologies, or stratigraphic sequences are presented. Much of the tectonic history however has been deduced from photogeomorphologic evidence and may not agree entirely with presently held views.

1959, the year of the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, marked the end of an era for the port of Montreal. For the first time in the history of navigation on the St. Lawrence River large ocean vessels gained access to the Great Lakes, and the port of Montreal was no longer the head of ocean navigation for large ocean ships. This study analyses the impact of these recent changes on the port of Montreal, and examines the new role of the port in changed patterns of navigation on the St. Lawrence River. It is a study of one of the most dynamic and important periods in the history of the port of Montreal. It is still too early to attempt to discover the full impact of the Seaway on the port of Montreal.

Sugar, the commercial product of the sugar-cane, has been a commodity of some prominence in world markets for the past four centuries. Today, the sugar-cane plant is cultivated in a number of countries in the tropics and subtropics--in many of which, conditions do not appear to be ideal. Because of the increasing demand for this commodity over so long a period and in so many diverse areas, sugar-cane has spread widely with the discovery and settlement of new lands, beginning in the 15th century. Subsequent expansion of European and world trade, vagaries of evolving geopolitics, and later, inter-commodity competition induced under differing political conditions helped to continue the spread of the plant. The sugar-cane which remains a major commercial crop, can benefit from a climatological investigation into its growth requirements, for this, in fact, has been very little investigated during the three hundred years of prominence and dispersal.

The climate of Knob Lake is analyzed by means of a detailed examination of the eight years’ (1955-1962) meteorological records of the first-order weather station operated by the personnel of the McGill Sub-Arctic Research Laboratory. Chapter II deals with the physical controls of climate and Chapter III the dynamic climatology. The main part of the thesis is Chapter IV, which is concerned with an analysis of the meteorological data. The final chapter offers some suggestions as to the use of the data in the field of applied climatology. It is hoped that the numerous tables and figures will aid future research students, working from the Laboratory, who require data of a meteorological nature.

Of all the major vegetational regions recognized on the earth's surface the tropical grasslands are those which most defy definition and on which least agreement has been reached concerning their origin and present environmental controls. The literature on the subject is already extensive, these grasslands having attracted the attention of a large number of natural scientists, in particular botanists, geographers and zoologists, yet almost all this work suffers from 'inadequate field data, and an almost total lack of experimental evidence’. {J. S. Beard, 1953; p. 149.) In consequence, interpretations tend to be highly coloured by, one, the nature of the investigator's own disciplinary training and, two, the field of his experience.

This thesis presents an analysis of pioneer settlement and subsequent rural depopulation and land abandonment during the post 200 years in an unrewarding area of northern New England. Orange County was first settled in 1762; population reached its maximum in 1840 and then declined steadily until the 1930’s (see Figure 1). This county, encompassing seventeen towns in east central Vermont, was selected as an example of a small area with economic problems representative of the problems of rural northern New England (the states of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine). The county unit, as the only source of adequate and continuous statistical information, determines the areal setting of this study; it is not claimed to be a geographical region.

As an earth-bound being man is confronted by two landscapes; the natural and the man-made, and both are of interest to him as an intellectual creature. While both landscapes may cause feelings of awe, or peace, or in some cases apprehension, the emotion aroused by the sight of a man-made landscape is imbued with a deeper feeling of identification which flows from the recognition of the work of fellow creatures. A sign of man in an otherwise empty landscape can change an l-It attitude to an I-Thou attitude, even though the sign may be no more than a vehicle track on the dry surface of a barren desert. Natural and man-made landscapes are of primary interest to the geographer, but while study of the first is likely to be largely objective, aimed at a deeper understanding of nature, study of the second is more subjective and aimed at a deeper understanding of man.

In Western Newfoundland, erosion surfaces are recognised at the following elevations: 2350-2500', 2100-2300', 1900-2150', 1750- 1900', 1550-1700', 1250-1500', 1100-1350', 1000-1150', 850-1000' and 750-850'. Surfaces below 750' were not investigated. All are considered to be of subaerial origin. By inductive reasoning, based on a recent hypothesis of the evolution of the continental margin of eastern North America, it is tentatively concluded that the group of surfaces above 2000' developed during a Cretaceous - early Cenozoic erosion cycle, and that lower surfaces are of later Cenozoic age. Uplift occurred at the beginning of the Cretaceous, in the mid Cenozoic and in the late Cenozoic. Small vertical intervals between the surfaces are tentatively attributed to periodic positive isostatic responses of the earth's crust to the relief of load by denudation since at least the beginning of the Cretaceous.

The "albedo", A, of a surface is defined as the ratio of, Ir, the radiation reflected by the surface and Io, the radiation incident upon the surface; or, A=Ir/Io. It is expressed either as a percentage or simply as a number. The term "reflectivity coefficient” is used by some authors for the same quantity. It is also understood that the albedo is restricted to the solar component of the radiation spectrum. For the present study the range of wavelengths is set effectively by the capability of the sensing instrument used which, in this case, is limited to the range 0.3 to 2.0 microns for the Kipp and Zonen Solarimeter. The energy emitted by the sun contained in the wavelengths greater than 2.0 microns is small by comparison to the energy contained in the wavelengths specified and can be safely ignored.