TIIK FOUNDATION FOR THE PALEOZOIC. L69 



uncovered hummocks ; and the phenomenon is so common as to leave no 

 doubt as to the character of the underlying surface. 



Review of the Evidence. 



Thus, wherever careful observations have been made as to the nature of 

 the superposition of the undisturbed Paleozoic rocks upon the Archean, 

 whether in the Lake Superior country, eastern Ontario, Quebec, or Labrador, 

 the evidence points to the same conclusion, i. e., that the early Paleozoic rocks 

 were laid down upon a surface which did not differ essentially from that pre- 

 sented by the exposed Archean surface of the present day upon which the 

 great Canadian glacier rested ; and that there is no good evidence of that 

 surface having undergone any material reduction in level, in consequence 

 of the conditions of the glacial epoch, either by any plowing power some- 

 times ascribed to glacier ice, or by the removal of the products of extensive 

 rock decay. 



General Considerations. 



In the foregoing pages the evidence, although briefly sketched, has been 

 specific, and attention has been confined to the immediate vicinity of the 

 edge of the Paleozoic formations. Let us turn now to a somewhat broader 

 aspect of the question. 



Former Extension of the Paleozoic. — There is excellent presumptive evidence 

 that the greater part, if not the whole, of the Canadian Archean terranes 

 were at onetime covered by Paleozoic strata, and the assumption so generally 

 made that they have always formed an upland region, serving as a source of 

 supply for the sediments which built up the Paleozoic formations, appears to 

 be scarcely warranted by the facts. 



The reconnaissance work of the Geological Survey of Canada, while it has 

 only effected an examination of a number of linear sections across the arms 

 of the V-shaped Archean nucleus, along the various canoe routes which 

 traverse it from the waters of the St. Lawrence and Lake Winnipeg systems 

 to the waters of Hudson's bay, has yet established the fact that there are 

 basins and outliers of Paleozoic rocks scattered over its surface which appear 

 to be but the remnants of once far wider spread formations. In the region 

 of the Saguenay, Laflamme * has described various outliers of Trenton other 

 than the well known one at Lake St. John, and the distribution of these 

 shows clearly that this formation must have extended for at least 150 miles 

 north of the St. Lawrence, over what is now for the most part bare Archean 

 surface, and the probability is that it extended much farther. 



: Op. cit., pp. 10-15. 



