326 The Drift or Boulder Formation, 



In Canada we have never seen boulders at all comparable for 

 their size with the stupendous blocks here mentioned as occur- 

 ring in Europe. Fragments from ten to fifteen feet in diameter 

 are often met with, but we know of no instance at all approaching 

 the magnificent dimensions of forty feet long, and fifty feet high. 

 This may be in some measure due to the fact that there is very 

 little granite in the regions where our boulders had their origin. 

 The rocks are there stratified, and it would be almost impossible 

 to find a mass of any great size that would not be easily separated 

 into numerous thin pieces corresponding to the thickness of the 

 strata. Perfectly coherent strata, fifty feet thick, must be rare ; 

 but granite, not being stratified, may form much larger boulders, 

 M. A. Archiac, in his history of the progress of Geology, says that 

 *' A block of granite on the calcareous mountain near Orsieres 

 contains more than 100,000 cubic feet. Above Mouthey, many 

 blocks derived from the Val de Fernet, and which have thus 

 travelled a distance not less than eleven leagues, contain from 

 8,000 to 50,000 and 60,000 cubic feet. One of the blocks of 

 granite near Seeberg measures 61,000 feet, and has travelled 

 about sixty leagues." In the Eastern States, where granite is 

 more common, the boulders are larger than they are in Canada. 

 Professor Hitchcock mentions one in New Hampshire which was 

 thirty feet in diameter, and another that measured one hundred 

 and fifty feet in horizontal circumference. 



In Mr. Murray's Report for 1844, he thus describes the drift of 

 that part of the Province which came under his observation dur- 

 ing that year : — " It cannot but have struck every one who has 

 travelled over the western part of Canada, that nearly the whole 

 of it is very much covered and concealed by a vast deposit of soft 

 or loose derivative material, and it is only where the country is 

 intersected by rivers, or on the lake shores, or in that mountain 

 ridge which extends from Queenston to Hamilton, and thence to 

 Nottawasaga Bay on Lake Huron, that an outcrop of the older 

 stratified rock is to be seen. 



" In the district which has on the present occasion been more 

 immediately the subject of my investigation, the deposit consists 

 of various beds of clay, sand and gravel, interspersed with large 

 boulders ; the thickness it attains is generally very considerable, 

 and frequently reaches 200 or 300 feet. The clay clifts of Scar- 

 borough are 320 feet ; the central bridges, as they are called, 

 running parallel to the north shore of Lake Ontario, are probably 



