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PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [Apr. 9, 



tremity sinks gradually to the level of the lake. These cliffs, 250- 

 300 feet high, are quite perpendicular and tolerably straight, but 

 broken from time to time into ravines, with partially wooded slopes 

 strewn with large erratics. The upper parts of the cliff are usually 

 worn by rain and torrents into large triangular excavations, reaching 

 only one-third of the way down ; so that they resemble a line of 

 houses, with the gables of their high-pitched roofs presented to the 

 street, as customary in Holland. At the angles of the petty indents, 

 they project into the lake in one, two, or three lofty, needle-like pyra- 

 mids ; the fissures being vertical. 



The sand of these cliffs is yellow and fine ; the clay is either white, 

 or bluish or chocolate-black ; both present thin horizontal layers, and 

 often succeed each other in one or more broad bands. 



The white clay, or marl (for it varies), is sometimes intimately 

 mixed with small bits of bluish black limestone, not to be distin- 

 guished from the Niagara limestone ; as well as with fine yellow 

 sand. 



I only landed twice, as we skirted close in shore ; and, although I 

 looked anxiously for organic remains of any kind, I found none. If 

 there had been any large bones in the face of the cliff, I was always 

 near enough to detect them, as I had done elsewhere. From these 

 Highlands to Kingston, at the outlet of Lake Ontario, its immediate 

 shores, when not mere marsh, are almost wholly earthy scarps, of 

 heights varying from 5 to 80 feet ; except at the angles of curvatures, 

 where there is often a few fractured ledges of horizontal limestone. 

 The same is the case on the south shore of this lake, especially about 

 Sodus. Everywhere we have banks of earth, clay, and ferruginous 

 sand, full of primitive and other boulders. 



Halfway to Port Hope (sixty miles from Toronto) the naked 

 loamy banks are filled with erratics. The terraces and other works 

 of aqueous origin which I saw between thirty and fifty miles from 

 Toronto, on my land journey, are often visible from the lake. They 

 range at various heights along shore in great sweeps, overlooking ex- 

 tensive morasses. At a distance of forty-seven miles from Toronto, the 

 scarped banks, 20-25 feet high, are altogether composed of extremely 

 white sand, containing many erratics, especially of white quartz. 



Three miles nearer Port Hope, they consist of loam and gneiss 

 boulders. 



About Port Hope, and for a few miles to the west, the lake is 

 bordered by naked banks, 10-40 feet high ; the lower half is clay, 

 the upper half sand or sandy loam. The clay is in very thin hori- 

 zontal layers, and is parted from the sand in waving lines. 



On the beaches we have everywhere small limestone-shingle and 

 large primitive blocks — marble, gneiss, &c. 



Of the interval of about thirty-five miles between Port Hope and 

 the Quinte Portage, I have only noted that for many miles west of 

 the latter point, from time to time broken lines of old water-margins 

 are visible on the rising coast, a hundred feet and more above the 

 water, at different distances (100 or 1800 yards) into the country. 

 They are short dilapidated terraces, patches of rock in low walls, 



