GLACIAL AND INTER-GLACIAL DEPOSITS NEAR 
LORONRO: 
A tonG line of yellowish white cliffs to the east of the city 
forms a striking feature of the voyage across Lake Ontario from 
Niagara to Toronto; and a closer examination of the Scarboro’ 
Heights discloses a most interesting section of the drift. At the 
highest point the cliffs rise more than 300 feet above the lake, 
and the thickness of the deposits is probably considerably greater 
than this, for the solid rock nowhere crops out ina distance of 
twenty miles. Along many parts of the Heights, which are in all 
nine and a half miles long, reaching from a point three and a half 
miles east of the River Don to the mouth of Highland Creek, 
the undermining action of the lake provides for a constant 
series of fresh exposures; and at other points the deep V-shaped 
valleys of small streams, afford almost as good sections. From 
Scarboro’ westwards to Toronto also, the cuttings for railroads 
and streets, and the ravines of the Don and its tributaries display 
more or less complete sections of the drift, some of them more 
than 150 feet in height. 
The Scarboro’ Heights were an object of interest to engineers 
and geologists more than forty years ago as the source of the 
sand which, driving westwards along the lake shore, is arrested 
by the current of the River Don, thus forming the island which 
protects the harbor of Toronto;* but no serious geological study 
appears to have been made of them except by Dr. George Jennings 
Hinde, who published an admirable account of them in 1878.7 
The results of his observations seem little known, probably from 
the fact of their having been published in a journal not very 
widely circulated and at atime when glacial studies did not_ 
* Reports on the Improvement and Preservation of Toronto Harbor, Prof. Henry 
Youle Hind, p. 1; Sandford Fleming, p. 15; Appendix to Canadian Journal, 1854-5. 
?Glacial and Inter-glacial Strata of Scarboro’ Heights, Can. Journ., 1878, p. 
388, etc. 
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