498 GEOLOGY OF THE WESTERN DISTRICTS OF CANADA, 
plorations is that lying between the Niagara and St. Clair Rivers, 
and the object in view in undertaking and prosecuting them was chiefly 
the gratification of my own tastes, for which, however, professional 
engagements have afforded both opportunities and further stimulus. 
T lay but little claim to the merit of originality in the observations 
I shall have to record; the geological structure of the regions in 
question having been fully investigated and most ably reported on 
by our Provincial Geologists ; and in stating my own observations I 
shall endeavour, as far as the nature of the subject will admit, to 
avoid repetition of the facts and phenomena which have been so fully 
chronicled by them, and to confine myself to such supplementary 
details and to such deductions and inferences as my own enquiries 
and studies may enable me to make. As illustrative of some of the 
most interesting peculiarities of structure in the region under notice, 
I propose also to reproduce the arguments of Sir Charles Lyell and 
other observers relative to the retrocession of the Falls of Niagara ; 
in corroboration of which I have noted some additional facts which 
have not hitherto been recorded. 
Section I. 
GEOLOGICAL FEATURES OF THE NIAGARA AND GORE DISTRICTS. 
General Description—The range of high lands which we are 
accustomed to denominate “the Mountain” running eastwards far 
into New York State—maintaining throughout a nearly uniform 
elevation of about four hundred feet above the level of Lake Ontario, 
and forming a platform or table land, in a basin of which Lake Hrie 
is situated—bends round the head of Lake Ontario and continues 
in a north-easterly direction till it gradually disappears in the neigh. 
bourhood of the Bay of Quinté. The same geological formations do 
not, however, occur throughout the whole of this distance, as I shall 
hereafter point out. Along the southern shore of the lake, the 
ridge runs at a distance varying from four to eight miles from the 
shore, and presents a nearly uniform precipitous escarpment on its 
northern flank. Around Burlington Bay it approaches still nearer 
the margin of the lake, and at Hast Flamboro’ bends to the north- 
ward and loses for the most part its precipitous character, and re. 
cedes gradually further from the shore, being not less than twenty-. 
four miles distant in the rear of Toronto, though again, as we 
