157 



You will observe that I have paid more particular attention to the 

 higher levels of the flood period, or the plestiocene drainage, than to 

 the pliocene, or later tertiary diainage, when our humble but interest- 

 ing ancestors must have already spread themselves by their character- 

 istic enterprise, over all the "known and unknown" parts of the 

 temperate latitudes of the globe. The great valley of the St. Lawrence 

 which is now filled by Lakes Ontai-io, Erie, Huron and Superior 

 undoubtedly existed in the Pliocene tertiary, that is, before the advent 

 of the flood pei'iod. It must also liave had an outlet. 



The confluent ice body into which the ice streams developed at the 

 period of extreme precipatation and cold ended southwards in Penn- 

 sylvania and Ohio as is delineated by H. Carville Lewis, of the 

 Pennsylvania Geological Sui-vey, (Report 2 in 188-1). 



Necessarily great river valleys existed before the advent of the 

 ice streams, and of the confluent ice body referred to. They were at 

 first followed by them ; but finally in many instances they were filled 

 up and altered in course by the debris of the glaciers ; and neatly 

 plastered over, and hidden beyond suspicion, by the loaming clays of 

 the happy Canadian farmer. These ancient rivers of the preceding 

 (tertiary) epoch had alread}- cut down deep into the Cambro-Silurian 

 bed rock; for this country had been untold ages out of water. You 

 cannot go to the Chats flapids, and to the Grenville and Lachine 

 rapids, and point to to the exposed bed rock in evidence of the depth 

 of the former erosion, because the ancient streams, as is well known, 

 have been diverted in many well known cases. 



Suppose this country to be rai.sed 1,000 Feet higher al)ove the sea, 

 and new streams to have dug down until they unearthed the old ones, 

 in patches and remnants; these tilled with gold to tempt the miner to 

 a frenzy of investigation, and you will have before you the conditions 

 of the mining industry of surface geology on the Pacific Coast. Every 

 body in that school becomes a geologist by profession. The Chinaman 

 and the white man together become experts, because their fortune 

 depends upon their reading nature skilfully and correctly. 



In reading the record of the boulder clays and of the leda clays of 



\this country we read the history of its former rivers, and naturally of its 



^inhabitants, its vegetaljlo and animal life, the kinds th-it existed before 

 ^^e flood of our own most anoient and interesting tradition. 



'?) 



