On Modern Glacial Action in Canada

Abstract

Second Article . Further inquiry into the action of ice in Canada furnishes new facts illustrating the powerful effects of this agent in changing or modifying the Boulder-drift surfaces of the country lying over the Silurian strata, even during the period of human observation; and if so, how much more of change must have been effected in this way during that comparatively long period which, as far as Canada is concerned, may be designated prehistoric, when it lacked observers to note, and a written language to record, those changes which must have occurred in the bygone centuries of its existence in its present form, and subject to the same powerful glacial agencies and climate? In addition to the facts furnished to the Geological Society, and kindly received by it, in my previous paper†, I am now in a position to lay before the Society further evidence of this nature. At the head of that arm of Lake Ontario named the Bay of Quinte, the Canadian river Trent discharges its waters at the village of Trenton; and a mile above the latter the lower or Frankford Rapids terminate. These rapids extend for about nine miles up the river, from this point to a mile above the village of Frankford, where there is again deep and navigable water. Between these two points the river runs over a limestone bed of the upper Trenton series of the Lower Silurian rocks, and the rapids are thus formed. At intervals small islands exist in what are