THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 1 35 



large portion of Sunnidale township and a part of the township of 

 Nottawasaga, which seems to have been inundated at some former 

 period, and lofty dark looking hills, which bound the landscape at a 

 distance of several miles on either hand, seem to have once formed 

 the shores of a watery expanse. Sunnidale township has a gener- 

 ally flat appearance, as level in fact as Burford Plains, in the county 

 of Brant, and in the area of two concessions of Sunnidale extensive 

 deposits of shell-marl exist ; and in these localities immense num- 

 bers of small lacustrine shells may be gathered among the material 

 excavated from the roadside ditches. These shells are longish 

 spiral in form, and are, like the marl in which they are imbedded, of 

 a light grey or whitish color, and seem identical with similar shells 

 which now bestrew the water's edge all along the Nottawasaga beach ; 

 and the slowly retreating waters of the Nottawasaga stream have 

 formed vast swamps of some hundreds of acres in extent near the 

 foot of the hills of Vespra township, a few miles from where the said 

 stream debouches into the Georgian Bay. 



Some well diggers in Sunnidale township made use of the ex- 

 pression in our hearing, " This is all made land ; " and related that 

 in the labors of their vocation trunks of large trees — still very slightly 

 decayed — -were very frequently met with at a depth of twelve to four- 

 teen feet from the earth's surface. 



The waters of Georgian Bay, when agitated by violent northerly 

 winds, and especially when encumbered by floating ice-masses in 

 spring, during past centuries seem to have made great inroads 

 in the coast line. Bluffs seem to have been battered down, and the 

 soluble material carried out by the roily waters, and deposited at 

 some greater or less distance from the shore, whilst the heterogenous 

 boulders are thickly stranded and in great variety as to size and 

 composition, protrude above the surface of the shallow waters of the 

 gradually shelving shore. 



Similar action of the elements has been, and is yet, going on 

 along the northern shore of Lake Erie. (The truth of this observa- 

 tion become very palpable and conspicuous to an observer who 

 lately visited the latter locality after an absence from the well 

 remembered scenes of about forty years. 



As we trace the Georgian Bay shore in an easterly or north- 

 easterly direction from the town of Collingwood, low ridges of coarse 



