510 GEOLOGY OF THE WESTERN DISTRICTS OF CANADA. 
and continuous character round the head of Burlington Bay as along 
its north and south flanks ; but there is the strongest reason to believe 
that they do. If then we conceive the rocks to have run continuously 
at the same elevation round the head of the valley, and at the same 
time imagine the sea to have covered them as explained before, we 
have here precisely the circumstances which would produce all the 
phenomena we now behold. A bay or basin would thus be formed 
entirely sheltered from currents, and into which large quantities of 
the floating ice-islands would be driven by the winds ; and thus would 
be produced that irregular, rollmg and deeply indented surface which 
we find prevailing from the eastern limits of Hamilton to Copetown. 
A succession of ridges of sand and gravel, no less than seven in 
number, in some places more, and in others less distinctly marked, 
have been traced for great distances along the north shore of Lake 
Ontario, and as far east as the Montreal Mountain and the slopes of 
the White Mountains in Vermont ; each preserving, as far as the Lake 
Ontario region is concerned, a uniform level at their bases, and all 
nearly parallel to each other and to the present beach of the Lake; 
but the lowest of these is one hundred and ten feet above the Lake at 
its base, and hence there is no reason to believe that the Heights form 
any portion of an ancient sea beach, as the others unquestionably are.* 
It is asserted by Lyell, on what seems to be uncontrovertible grounds, 
that these beaches indicate the succession of levels of the sea as the 
country underwent a gradual and intermittent upward movement 
after the deposition of the boulder or drift formation, which was the 
last great change previous to the present era in the earth’s history. 
I may remark here that the deep notch or indentation formed by 
the Niagara river at the whirlpool on the Canadian side, is bounded 
by a formation consisting exclusively of clay, cemented gravel and 
sand, with boulders both of granitic and limestone origin, precisely 
similar to the formation at Burlington Heights; and that there is an 
obvious connection between this break in the older strata and the 
opening in the escarpment at St. David’s, indicating that here a deep 
* In the year 1852 in excavating through the Burlington Heights for the Great Western 
Railway, a gigantic tusk of a Mammoth or Hlephas Primiginius was exhumed, having been 
buried in the solid conglomerate at the depth of forty feet below the surface; cnd in the 
same cutting, the horn of a, Wapiti or Canadian Stag was brought to light. This latter 
species is not yet quite, although rapidly becoming, extinct on this continent; and the 
occurrence of its remains, associated with those of a species which has been extinct previous 
to the historic period, forms an interesting link between the past and present geological 
epochs. 
