SOME LOCAL DETAILS. 195 



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

 (No. 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 

 Metis, and may refer to that chapter for such details as 

 are of interest. 



VIII. River St. Lawrence above Quebec, 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 Rhynconella 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 

 Eoche 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 



