1 91 3] The Moraine Systems of Southwestern Ontario. 71 



velopment from Orangeville to Singhampton. It is particularly fine 

 east of Primrose and Honeywood, where it is over 100 feet in height. 

 In both of these places it rises like a miniature mountain range, with 

 steep, high front, and faces west over the nearly smooth plain of the high- 

 land which is a country entirely different from it in form and expression. 



North of Credit Forks the course of this moraine is greatly in- 

 fluenced by the stream valleys that indent the escarpment. The ice 

 barely overtopped the escarpment and gave full expression to these 

 indentations in the sharp bends and angles of the moraine. 



At this time there was, of course, a great gathering of water along 

 the front of the ice and it formed a river of great size and increasing 

 volume as it flowed away southward. Its headward parts have not all 

 been worked out, but south of Orangeville its course is well marked, 

 at first meandering among the drumlins of Erin and Eramosa. This 

 stream flowed past the present sites of Guelph, Hespeler and Preston, 

 and passing two or three miles west of Paris, emptied into one of the 

 glacial lakes in the vicinity of Port Dover Junction. This Seaforth- 

 Paris moraine furnishes the first complete ice boundary as yet established 

 for "Ontario Island". At this stage the island had expanded to several 

 times its original size, but was still bounded by ice along a line nearly 

 eight times as long as the lake shore boundary across its south end. It 

 was still nearly 100 miles to the nearest mainland. 



8. The Gait Moraine. — This moraine is very closely linked with the 

 Paris moraine. From Scotland, about 12 miles south of Paris, to Sing- 

 hampton it is nowhere more than two or three miles back or east of the 

 Paris moraine. This might be expected along the escarpment, Vv-here 

 this moraine drops below its edge and vertical descent counted for as 

 much or more than horizontal distance in retreat. But this relation con- 

 tinues from Credit Forks southward to Scotland where the moraines 

 are 20 to 25 miles back of che escarpment. 



The Gait moraine keeps its strength southward from Brantford to 

 Simcos and, indeed, is still a distinct ridge at Port Ryerse, where it is 

 cut off at che lake shore. Between Gait and Eden Mills the two moraines 

 are almost merged in one. From a point three miles southwest of Acton 

 to Credit Forks the Gait moraine rests on the very edge of the escarp- 

 ment and is quite fragmentary. Another moraine coming up from the 

 south is set close behind the Gait moraine north of Credit Forks, and 

 there are reasons for believing that this moraine overrides the Gait 

 moraine at some point farther north. The studies of these lower moraines 

 that skirt the escarpment is not yet complete, and while incomplete work 

 seemed to show the Gait moraine extending to Gibraltar and finding its 

 continuation in the Wyoming-Port Huron moraine of the Huron basin, 



