GEOLOGY OF THE WESTERN DISTRICTS OF CANADA. 509 
the surfaces of the harder rocks in siéu in the peninsula, wherever 
exposed by the removal of the drift, are found to be smoothed, polish- 
ed, furrowed and scratched ina direction from N.E. to S.W. Any one 
who has had occasion to visit Niagara Falls will see this phenomena 
strikingly developed along the top of the cliff on the American side, 
and at the excavation for the Hydraulic canal, about half a mile 
below the Fall. That this smoothing and scratching of the rocks 
could not be produced simply by the action of torrents of water 
carrying stones with it, may be satisfactorily proved by examining 
the rocks in the bed of the river, which, even where the current is 
most rapid, exhibit no analogous effect. 
General Inferences.—In order to account for all the phenomena I 
have thus briefly sketched, we are irresistibly impelled to the conclu- 
sion that subsequently to this region having acquired its present geo- 
graphical configuration, so far as relates to the outline of the older 
rocks, the land was submerged under the sea to a moderate depth, and 
that large ice-islands were driven by currents from the north, charged 
with mud, sand and boulders, which, as they grounded on the bottom, 
pushed along all loose materials of sand and pebbles, broke off all 
angular and projecting points of rock, and when fragments of hard 
stone were frozen into their lower surfaces, scooped out furrows and 
grooves in the subjacent rocks. When the icebergs melted, the soft and 
loose insoluble materials which they conveyed subsided into the bottom, 
filling up valleys in the ancient rocks, covering them under a mass of 
clay and sand where currents were powerful enough to reduce the 
deposits to a general level, and forming mounds and hillocks of the 
same, in places where such currents did not prevail. That this was 
actually the case is proved by independent evidence, namely, the occur- 
rence of marine shells of recent species, in the drift formation at 
various heights above the level of the sea in the region drained by the 
St. Lawrence. 
Burlington Beach and Heights—Of this nature and origin I have no 
doubt are the remarkable formations of the Burlington Beach and 
Heights, which seem to have been expressly designed by Providence, 
the first as a natural rampart and breakwater to protect our magnifi- 
cent harbour, and the latter asa bridge to facilitate our communications 
by land. The immense masses of clay and drift which conceal the 
older formations between Dundas and Copetown render it impossible 
to say with certaimity whether the latter preserve the same precipitous 
