SOME LOCAL DETAILS. 195 



At the Petite Kiviere-du-Loup the surface of the red clay 

 (Xo. 6 above) was observed to have burrows of Mya arenaria 

 with the shells (of a deep-water form) still within them. 



I have already had occasion, in Chapter III., to notice 

 the Pleistocene and modern deposits as seen at Little 

 ]\Ietis, and may refer to that chapter for such details as 

 are of interest. 



VIII. — River St. Laivrence above Qitehec, and Ottawa Valley. 



Quebec and its Vicinity. — The deposits at Beauport, near 

 Quebec, were described by Sir C. Lyell in the Geological 

 Transactions for 1839 ; and a list of their fossils was given, 

 and was compared with those of Montreal in my paper of 

 1859. As exposed at the Beauport Mills, the Pleistocene 

 beds consist of a thick bed of boulder-clay, on which rests 

 a thin layer of sand with Rliynconella psittacea and other 

 deep-water shells. Over this is a thick bed of stratified 

 sand and gravel filled with Saxicava rugosa and Tellina. 

 Scattered Laurentian boulders here, as at Montreal and 

 elsewhere, occur in the beds with the shells. In a brook 

 near this place, and also in the rising ground behind Point 

 Levis, the deep-water bed attains to greater thickness, but 

 does not assume the aspect of a true Leda clay. Above 

 Quebec, however, the clays assume more importance ; and 

 between that place and Montreal are spread over all the 

 low country, often attaining a great thickness, and not 

 unfrequently capped with Saxicava sand. At Cap a la 

 lloche the officers of the Geological Survey have found a 

 bed of stratified sand under the Leda clay. The Beauport 

 deposit is evidently somewhat exceptional in its want of 

 Leda clay, and this I suppose may have been owing to the 

 powerful currents of water which have swept around Cape 

 Diamond at the time of the elevation of the land out of 



