1914] The Ottawa Naturalist. 107 



PLEISTOCENE RAISED BEACHES AT VICTORIA, B.C. 



By C. F. Newcombe, Victoria, B.C. 



Dr. C. H. Clapp's recently issued article on the Geology of 

 the Victoria and Saanich Map-Areas, Vane. I., B.C., Memoir 

 No. 36, of the Geological Survey of Canada, includes a very 

 notable contribution to the classification of the superficial 

 deposits in the district treated of. 



He makes no distinct mention, however, of certain feattires . 

 which have long been of great interest to local amateur geo- 

 logists, — the numerous deposits containing marine shells found 

 near the present surface, but usually underlying a peaty layer 

 of no great depth. These, so far as I can make out, are super- 

 imposed on the May wood clays of Clapp, lying in shallow- 

 depressions in places where, at the time of their deposition, they 

 were little exposed to distvirbance by tides or storms. 



The peatv layers contain freshwater shells of species still 

 living in this neighborhood, and some of the localities have only 

 been drained quite recently, and are margined by swamps with 

 sphagnum, Betula glandulosa. Ledum,' eXc. The marine shells 

 frequently retain their valves in apposition, and in many cases 

 even the cartilaginous hinge is entire. 



The earliest notice I can find of these interior raised beaches 

 is a note by Mr. James Richardson in the Report of the Geo- 

 logical Survey for 1871-2, p. 94, whex"e he reports a shell-bed 

 to the east of the Saanich road, at a height of abotit three hundred 

 feet above the sea. 



The first beach of the kind examined by the writer was one 

 to which attention was called by Mr. F. Pemberton, of Victoria 

 in 1889. He told me that during the removal of black soil 

 from the family estate, near Ross Ba\' Cemetery, for the late 

 Mr. Robert Dunsmuir's new grounds at Craigdarroch, a large 

 quantity of shells were being exposed under the peat. I found 

 that under a foot or two of decayed vegetable matter containing 

 freshwater shells were the following marine species: -Cardiufn 

 corbis Mart., Macoma calcarea Gmel., Myti truncaia L., Mytilus 

 edulis L., Saxicava arctica L., and Saxi'donius giganteus Desh. 



