TITLES AND ABSTRACTS OF PAPERS 71 



LENGTH AND CHARACTER OF THE EARLIEST INTERGLACIAL BED8 

 BY A. P. COLEMAN 



(Abstract) 



The earliest interglacial beds at Toronto correspond in age to deposits in 

 New York and on both sides of Lake Erie. Tliey are almost certainly of the 

 same age as lignites, occurring at 27 points on the Hudson Bay slope, 400 miles 

 north of Toronto. They are probably equivalent to the Aftonian interglacial 

 beds, since the fossils, so far as they can be compared, are of the same genera 

 and perhaps of the same species. It is probable that the mammals of the 

 Toronto formation are all extinct ; TO out of 72 beetles are extinct and several 

 of the trees. The thav^ing of the Labrador ice-sheet is proved to have ex- 

 tended to within 300 miles of the glacial center, and the warmth of the climate 

 was greater than now ; so that the ice must have entirely disappeared at this 

 period. Interglacial sections at Toronto disclose valleys deeply carved by 

 rivers before the beds were laid down and also after they had been completed. 

 The time necessary to carve these valleys and to deposit 185 feet of delta 

 materials must have been thrice as long as post-Glacial time, say 75,000 to 

 100,000 years. 



Presented in full without notes. 



AGE OF THE GLACIAL DEPOSITS IN THE DON VALLEY, TORONTO, ONTARIO 



BY G. FBEDEEICK WEIGHT 



(Al)stract) 



Current estimates of the age of the Don glacial deposits are clearly in con- 

 flict with the evidence of a more recent retreat of the ice from the southern 

 watershed of Lake Erie, where abundant facts show that the southern shore- 

 line of Lake Warren can not be more than 12,000 or 15,000 years old ; but this 

 Is, of course, considerably older than the latest glacial deposits in the Don 

 Valley. Facts have been collected to show that the glacial lakes, on whose 

 shores the lake ridges south of Lake Erie were formed, continued only about 

 1,000 years, while the sedimentary deposits of the terrace exposed at Scarboro 

 appear to have been accumulated in about 3,000 years, which would represent 

 the time that elapsed after the opening of drainage south of the glacial ice in 

 the Mohawk Valley and the final opening through the Saint Lawrence. The 

 miniature Niagara gorge southwest of Syracuse probably represents the work 

 done in this line of drainage during the accumulation of the fluviatile glacial 

 deposits in the Don Valley. 



There is much convincing evidence that the first glacial advance over this 

 area proceeded from the Keewatin center, which, after a partial retreat, gave 

 place to the ice from Labrador. It is possible, and indeed probable, therefore, 

 that the southern species of plants and animals found above the lower glacial 

 deposits in the Don Valley and incorporated in the later fluvial deposits are 

 specimens of the earlier deposits which were disturbed by the latter and re- 

 deposited, as it is now generally believed that the sea-shells on Moel Tryfaen, 

 In Wales, and Macclesfield, England, were deposited. 



Presented in full without notes. 



