85 



as far as the Bonnechure River, are now some 500 feet above tlie mean, 

 tide level at Three Rivers, so that there must have been, at least, an 

 elevation of 500 feet in this part of the American Continent in later 

 Post-Tertiary times. Those sands, to which the term " Saxicava Sand' 

 has been applied by Sir W. Dawson and others, are veiy generally 

 distributed over the gravels, clays and older boulder glacial clays in this 

 district. Sandy Hill received its name no doubt on account of the 

 prevelance of this rock about that part of the city, although there is 

 perhaps twenty-five times more clay on Sandy Hill than sand. Near the 

 junction of the sands with the clays below and in places when the the 

 gravels are not coarse, there ai'e found several s^jecies of fosfjils, some 

 of which have already been recorded in the Club's transactions. Maconia 

 calcarea, Chemnitz, M. fragilis, Fabricius, Natica affinis, Gmelin, and 

 others occur in these deposits, but as a lule they are nearly always 

 destitute of fossils. As there must certainly have been many at one 

 time, their remains must have been decomposed and become obliterated. 

 A. peculiar seam one inch in thickness occurs near the corner of Waller 

 and Rideau streets, and divides the u{)per sands into two parts. 

 This bed consists for the most part of leaves of po()lar and other trees, 

 bits of grasses and sedges held together, but has been observed to be 

 continuous only for a limited area. Theie is considerable evidence to 

 show that much of the sands of the distiict were redeposited in lagoons 

 or lakes along river shores in later times. Overlying the sands in 

 New Edinburgh, on the east side of Hemlock Lake, there o curs a 

 deposit of shell-marl teeming with remains of fresh water and land 



! mollusca, evidently a lacustrine deposit. This bed is now at a con- 

 siderable elevation above the present lake and river levels. 



The u})per poi'tion of these samls is that with which we 

 have last to deal, and is included in that period which we 

 call here the Human ])eriod, for in it do we find for tiie first time 

 traces of the existence of human beings. The loam or surface soil, 

 cultivated or not, in which implements of stone are found associated 



. with fragments of pottery, bones of deer, bear, beaver and other 

 animals, points clearly to the fact that man of two distinct types has 

 left his mark in these newer overlvincj beds. Previous to this, however, 

 no records exist which shov/, that here in Canada, man can\e in these 



