292 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. X. 



iitiou for the change of character of the drift deposits from the 

 marine •' Boulder clay " of the St. Lawrence valley to that of the 

 lower boulder-bearing (probably) fresh-water Erie stratified clays, 

 for the conditions favorable to the deposition of the topographi- 

 cally lower Boulder clay would exist for a longer period than 

 those of the Erie clay having been begun and partly completed 

 before the formation of the latter cla}^ The increasing accumu- 

 lation (if ice about the barrier hills w^ould close the St. Lawrence 

 valley to marine currents, and cut off much of the precipitation 

 of moisture from the interior basin, leaving it freer to the action 

 of coast and berg ice from the adjacent mountains. 



Higher than the Niagara escarpment, or 750 feet above the 

 f^ea, the country beyond the western end of Lake Ontario affords 

 very little Boulder clay except in old buried valleys. 



The greater part of Erie clay appears to be contemporary with 

 the later deposited portions of the Boulder clay and with the 

 Leda clay of the St. Lawrence valley during a time of contracted 

 ice sheets, when the sea was again making inroads on the conti- 

 nent. The Erie clay occurs at elevations of 1000 feet in the 

 Province of Ontario. 



The Unjrrocen Character of the Glacial Hypothesis. — After 

 careful study of the subject of the drift deposits in the lake region, 

 and after reading an immense amount of literature on the subject 

 of glacial geology of America, wherein one finds many intererest- 

 ing discoveries, yet an enormous amount of dogmatism unworthy 

 of scientific observers, there is but one conclusion that I can 

 arrive at — namely, that the glacial theory is not applicable to the 

 explanation of the physical features of the lake region, either of 

 the moulding of the country, as considered under the origin of 

 the lakes or of the glaciation, or of the drift deposits of the On- 

 tario peninsula. It is true that a great theory cannot be con- 

 sidered either as proven or disproven by limited observation, 

 and that is all which this paper purports be — not a consideration 

 of the whole subject, even as far as America is concerned, much 

 less Europe. 



Events after the Close of the E^toch of Erie Clay. — After the 

 period of the deposit of stratified Erie clay, there appears to have 

 been an elevation of the laud, for in Ohio and other States it is 

 succeeded by a forest growth and denudation of the surface of the 

 country. 



During this time in Ontario the surface of the Erie clay was 



