[AMI] GEOLOGY OF SOME CITIES IN EASTERN CANADA 147 
besides the alluvial and lacustrine deposits varying in thickness from 
a few inches to several feet, and holding recent plants and shells to- 
gether with pre-historic human and other ethnological remains, are 
found in the valley of the St. Charles River and in other localities. 
TORONTO, ONTARIO. 
The city of Toronto is built for the most part upon the raised 
beaches and abandoned strands of Lake Ontario, when the general levels 
ot the waters of that lake occupied different elevations. There are a 
number of very distinct and prominent beaches, which run approxim- 
ately east and west in the northern portion of the city. These con- 
stitute the newest of the Pleistocene deposits. They are underlaid by 
various bands of stratified and unstratified more or less coherent sheets 
of rock material, sand and clay, which have given rise to a great deal 
of speculation as to their nature and origin. (Vide Table No. IV., 
ne TL.) 
Especially of late years has a very lively interest been aroused in 
the study of the Pleistocene geology of Toronto. Through the writ- 
ings of Sir Sandford Fleming, Dr. Geo. Jennings Hinde, Prof. A. P. 
Coleman, Dr. J. W. Spencer and others, the glacial and inter-glacial 
as well as newer deposits have been studied and described in detail, 
and many points regarding the geological structure of the numerous 
sand and clay bluffs and terraces of Toronto, skirting the lake shore, 
have yielded interesting features in stratigraphy, and valuable speci- 
mens of fossil organic remains. 
The great thickness of drift, which throughout Toronto and its 
environs, covers the paleozoic floor, has so far been all referred to the 
: Post-Tertiary or Quateruary System in geology, but it has been sug- 
gested by some geologists, that beneath some of the boulder or glacial 
clays of Toronto, and especially those of Scarborough Heights, there 
might exist stratified deposits, which may not unlikely be referable to 
the Tertiary System. 
The only Palæozoic formation which crops out in the neighbourhood 
of, and in Toronto, is the Lorraine formation, the newest of the forma- 
tions of the Ordovician system. No other formation has been met with, 
within a considerable radius of Toronto, but in a number of deep wells, 
which have been bored in and about Toronto, the regular series of 
Eastern Ontario paleozoic sediments has been traversed and in several 
instances, the subjacent old crystalline rocks have been reached. The 
depths at which the crystalline rocks have been reached vary in different 
places. At Copeland’s Brewery, the Archean or granite rock, was 
R Sec. IV., 1900. 8. 
