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 greyish 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 AVoodstock, 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. Hoff thinks, con- 
firms the opinion of L3^ell 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 Yauclusianum. — [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 pterygoid muscle imme- 
diately beneath it, rendering it very improbable that any tooth can have 
existed behind it in the jaw. C. C. 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}' 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. 489. 
