214 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. X. 



but will here be reprinted with some alterations without quota- 

 tion marks. 



II. — TOPOGRAPHY OF THE REGION ABOUT THE WESTERN 



END OP LAKE ONTARIO.^ 



The Niagara Escarpment. — This range of hills commences its 

 course in Central New York, and extends westward, at no great 

 distance south of Lake Ontario. It enters Canada at Queenston 

 Heights, and thence its trend is to the western end of the lake, 

 where, near Hamilton, it turns northward and extends to Cabot's 

 head and Manitoulin island. Everywhere in Canada, south of 

 Lake Ontario, it has an abrupt fall looking towards the north- 

 ward ; but at Thorold and other places to the eastward its brow 

 is more broken than at Grimsby, and westward. At Hamilton the 

 brow of the escarpment varies from 388 to 396 feet above Lake 

 Ontario. About five miles east of Hamilton the escarpment 

 makes an abrupt bend enclosing a triangular valley, down which 

 Rosseaux creek and other streams flow. This valley is about two 

 miles wide at its mouth, and has a length of about the same 

 distance. 



About five miles westward of Hamilton the Niagara escarp- 

 ment becomes covered with the drift deposits of a broken country, 

 or rather ends abruptly in the drift of the region. Above the 

 range, the country gradually rises to the divide between Lake 

 Ontario and the Grand river, or Lake Erie, without any con- 

 spicuous features. South-eastward of Hamilton, at a point about 

 five miles from the brow of the escarpment, where the Hamilton 

 and North-Western Railway reaches the summit, the altitude 

 above Lake Ontario is 493 feet. At Carpenter's quarry, two 

 miles southward of the " mountain " brow, at the head of James 

 street, the altitude reaches 485 feet; and near Ancaster the sum- 

 mit is 510 feet above Lake Ontario. From eastward of Grimsby 

 (for twenty miles) to near Ancaster, the escarpment presents an 

 abrupt face from 150 to 250 feet below the summit (having a 

 moderate amount of talus at the base), thence it extends by a 

 more or less steep series of slopes to the plane, which gradually 



* The topography is partly represented on map accompanying 

 PalcGozoic Geology. Burlington Heights is the spur of land between 

 the Marsh and Burlington Bay. 



