134 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



we have several lakelets remaining, although rapidly silting up ; ot 

 these it is necessary only to mention Lake Medad, near Waterdown, 

 and Puslinch Lake, east of Hespeler. Again, too, by way of con- 

 trast, this district attains an altitude varying from over five hundred 

 feet to over seven hundred above Lake Ontario, thus showing us 

 another more ancient extension of the present Lakes Erie and Huron, 



Tracing the rivers of the first, the most northerly mentioned 

 district to their sources, we find in the counties of Simcoe, Grey, 

 Dufferin, North Wellington, North Perth and Bruce, the largest and 

 most important area of all, possessing the same general character- 

 istics — the highest part nearest the front of the escarpment, and a 

 slope thence westward and northward ; beautiful lakelets, bilberry 

 and tamarack swamps, broken by ridges of stratified gravel, and 

 fine, clear streams of pure water. Often the gravel ridges guide the 

 course of the streams, suggesting as has been already remarked in 

 the case of the Saugeen branches, a deep valley of erosion,- a view 

 dispelled by a more thorough examination. Often, too, where the 

 land has been cleared and drained giving a fertile tract to the 

 farmer, the view from one ot these ridges is entrancing indeed. The 

 cleared plain, through which the stream meanders, rolls away to the 

 next distant ridge mayhap three, mayhap ten miles ; here is a strip 

 of uncleared swamp land, the home of the Linnea bcrealis and of 

 the pitcher-plant, and the haunt of the white-throated sparrow and 

 of the blue jay ; there is one of the many charming, tree-embowered 

 lakelets that dot the landscape of this northern area. Here as 

 before we see the extension still further of the present great lakes, 

 or rather in the great lakes we see the remnant of a once great 

 fresh-water sea which covered the whole western peninsula of 

 Ontario. Now, bearing in mind that the last described area has a 

 mean elevation of eleven hundred feet above Lake Ontario, and 

 that the proof of this having been once submerged is evident, let us 

 state the full significance of this and briefly recapitulate the steps by 

 which our river-valleys, so imperfectly described above, have 

 originated. 



A submergence which would place the summit of our western 

 peninsula, Dundalk, Grey Co., seventeen hundred feet above the 

 level of the sea, beneath the waves, would cover not only the whole 

 of Ontario as far as the " Height of Land," or the Laurentides north 

 of the Ottawa, but would submerge all Quebec except the monntains 



