THE GEOLOGIST. 



Robert Bell, under the direction of Sir Wm. Logan, have thrown much 

 light upon the subject. These three accomplished observers are agreed in 

 dividing the superficial deposits, or drift, of Canada, into an upper and a 

 lower member ; the former consisting of dark blue and grej T ish clays, the 

 debris of the underlying limestone, and nearly destitute of boulders ; the 

 latter of sand and gravel of granitic or gneissoid origin, with numerous 

 boulders. Throughout Lower Canada, and as far west as Kingston, the 

 relative age of this deposit has been determined by appropriate fossils of 

 recent or existing species ; and although these are wanting in the Upper 

 Province, the analogy is presumed to be established by other characteristic 

 features. 



The fact to which the author specially draws attention is, that the older 

 formation prevails almost exclusively in western Canada on the elevated 

 platform bounded on the north and east by the Niagara escarpment, which 

 sweeps round in a bold and abrupt manner from the Niagara, the 

 head of Lake Ontario, and northward to Cabot's Head, on Lake Huron, 

 forming a very marked feature in the physical geography of the province. 

 The whole of the country for a great distance to the east, by this line, and 

 especially towards the base of the escarpment, is thickly strewn with sand, 

 gravel, and boulders of Laurentian origin ; while to the west these are of 

 very rare occurrence, and are replaced by materials evidently derived from 

 the disintegration of the underlying limestone. From the Niagara escarp- 

 ment westward to the height of land near Woodstock, this difference is less 

 marked than from that point still further west to the shores of Lake Hu- 

 ron. The inference to be drawn from these facts, Mr. Roff thinks, con- 

 firms the opinion of Lyell and others who have examined the physical 

 geography of Canada, that the contour of the fundamental rocks of the 

 country was impressed at an epoch long anterior to the glacial or drift 

 period, and that the elevated platform of the western peninsula, if not 

 actually above the level of the sea at that period, was sufficiently high to 

 resist the intrusion of ice-islands charged with the debris of the Laurentian 

 and other ancient northern rocks which would be drifted by the glacial 

 currents from the north-east. 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



Didymodon Vaucltjsianuh. — [The following note was accidentally left 

 out of Mr. Blake's paper in last month's ' Geologist.'] I have been led to 

 consider the last tooth in the jaw as the third molar, by reason of the shape 

 of the impression indicating the insertion of the pter} T goid muscle imme- 

 diately beneath it, rendering it very improbable that any tooth can have 

 existed behind it in the jaw. C. 0. Blake. 



Kitchen-Middens of New Zealand. — Mr. Lubbock has, in an able 

 and interesting memoir in a late number of the ' Natural History Review,' 

 described a series of shell-deposits in Denmark termed " Kjokkenmod- 

 dings," or kitchen-middens, being the heaps of waste shells and other debris, 

 thrown aside after their feasts by the ancient human inhabitants of the coun- 

 try.* It ma} r not be uninteresting to know that deposits similar to the 

 " Kjokkenmoddings " are still in course of formation, though not perhaps 

 in Europe. In New Zealand, large heaps of shells, often six or eight feet 

 in thickness, are common near the shore. These are most frequently met 



* 'Natural History Review,' vol. i., 1861, p. 4S9. 



