274 THE ICE AGE IN CANADA. 



scribed by Professor Penhallow, Below this sand were 

 16 feet of alternating sand and dark-colored clay, with 

 fresh-water shells and wood. Below this was the blue 

 till resting on the surface of the Hudson river beds. In 

 this section the upper boulder-clay of Hinde's section is 

 not represented, but only the lower groups as given in his 

 table. The upper boulder-clay is, however, seen on higher 

 ground in the vicinity. 



Dr. J. W. Spencer, who has studied this locality, as 

 well as the whole north shore of Lake Ontario, writes to 

 me that he regards the earthy sand holding wood and 

 fresh-water shells as equivalent to Hinde's " interglacial " 

 beds at Scarboro' heights, and the overlying clay as the 

 so-called " Erie clay," over which, as above stated, is the 

 upper boulder deposit which, in the vicinity of Toronto, 

 has many Laurentian boulders. 



Observations have been made on the interglacial beds 

 of the West by Dr. G. M. Dawson, and are recorded 

 in his reports on the 49th Parallel, and on the geology of 

 the Bow and Belly rivers, and in a paper on borings made 

 in Manitoba and the North-west Territories, in Vol. IV. 

 of the Transactions of the Eoyal Society of Canada ; and 

 he has placed in my hands specimens of peat and wood 

 from those regions. In one locality on the Belly river he 

 finds a bed of interglacial peat, hardened by pressure in 

 such a manner as to assume the appearance of a lignite. 



In addition to the vegetable remains found as above 

 stated in the " forest beds " or " interglacial " deposits, 

 trunks of trees and vegetable frac^ments occur in the 

 boulder-clays themselves, indicatiug either the partial 

 destruction of the older interglacial bed and the mixture 

 of its debris with glacial deposits, or the enclosure of 

 drift-wood in the latter in the manner now so common 



