meets the lower escarpment near Mr. Leith's gate. The upper escarpment is, in this vicinity, considerably broken. There is an old channel at the northern end of the village of considerable depth, but of no great width or length. This break or channel is filled with clay and sand drift with large flag shaped boulders of limestone and sandstone, tilted at high angles, some of them being set on edge. The upper bed is of limestone, weathered into pits or honeycombed, and corresponds to Number Six of the section given by Sir William Logan, in his geology of Canada.* The head of this ravine behind the village, is crossed by the honeycombed rock which the stream has cut through, and is now passing over the underlying shales which the water has worn off into small steps. This stream has worn a large channel in the shales of the lower escarpment at the Red Mills, on the road leading from Ancaster to Dundas. The head of this channel is five hundred and ten feet above Lake Ontario. Passing along the northern end of the village this escarpment shows a bold face looking north, a short distance, when it is again broken by a stream having a channel of considerable width, but of no great depth. Here, the upper beds of the escarpment are very much broken by fissures of considerable width, and in many places present a series of steps. At other places the drift completely covers the escarpment only allowing the rock to appear here and there on the side of the stream. After crossing this stream the upper escarpment passes into the sandhills of the neighborhood and disappears. The honeycomb bed can be seen on the surface west of the village, and also on the farms of of Messrs. George Farmer and A. Book, a distance of something like four miles to the south of the village of Ancaster. From these exposures, we might be inclined to infer that the upper escarpment turned south from Ancaster village, leaving a basin to the west between it and the Onondago group. The beds of the upper escarpment are made into lime by Messrs Guest, and also quarried for building purposes, on both sides of the stream at Ancaster. The top bed at Guest's lime-kiln runs out before reaching the quarry on the adjoining farm. Between the top of the lower escarpment and the foot of the upper, there is a considerable tract of level rocky floor covered with *Geology of Canada, page 324. drift of considerable depth. A well bored by Mr. Guest, to a depth of thirty-five feet, passes through sandy loam the whole way and finishes in quicksand. This well is only within a few hundred yards of the upper or lime ridge. The Drift covering this rocky floor is heaped up into long shaped hills on the outside, leaving a valley between them and the talus of the upper escarpment. Through this valley, the stream from the northern end of the village passes and shows in its banks beds of gravel and boulders in patches. The hills are mostly of clay, with pebbles and streaks of sand, and where cut by streams show no signs of being stratified. This cutting away of the upper beds, I would refer to ice action, as, on a sheet of rock exposed where the lower escarpment crosses the road, there are striae running in a direction of N. 60, E. It is interesting to note that on the road, at the lime-kilns, there is an exposure showing the black shales of the Niagara formation, with several contorted beds of thin shales lying immediately above them. These contorted beds are surmounted by other beds of a uniform level with the black shales underneath. The quarry close to the Woollen Mill, belonging to the Egleston estate, and lying on the other side of the ravine, shows several large perpendicular fractures passing from the surface down through the several beds in the face of the quarry so far as exposed. At one place, two of these fractures run parallel to each other at a distance of three feet apart, and giving the enclosed rock the appearance of a dyke. That it is not a dyke, however, can be seen from the enclosed material being of the same texture, and having the same bedding in uniformity with the rest of the quarry. At Guest's lime kiln, just above the exposure of the black shales, the top beds, where not quarried, show a cut-away edge, somewhat as if a mighty agency had passed along and bevelled them off. This cutting away has the appearance of being due to the action of the waves, whether it was only done by the ice and the markings afterwards obliterated by the action of the water, I cannot say. It is, however, probable that such is the case, as the upper beds are not of such a nature as to retain any but very deep marks. In no place in this vicinity have I seen ice-markings on this upper escarpment. The escarpment on the more westerly, or West Flamboro' side of the valley, differs in some respects from the Hamilton side. There are fewer streams on the west, there being only three or four large brooks, contrasted with the numerous small streams on the other side. The quantity of talus or detritus is much greater on the West Flamboro' side of the valley, than on the Hamilton. So extensive is this detritus in some places, that it completely covers the rocky escarpment. Section of clay beds near Copetown showing old channel in the blue clay. This section is contorted to show more clearly the position of the gravel. The division from Copetown to Dundas is to a great extent, covered by heavy clay drift, the rock bedding only breaking through here and there, and showing mostly the upper strata of the Niagara group. In this division the drift is composed of two heavy unstratified clay beds. The clay of the upper bed is of a light color, and lies unconformably upon the blue clay of the lower division. The light-colored clay is very thick, in some places showing an exposure of between eighteen and twenty feet. "Colour is of little value in determining the division of clays into beds, as many of the dark brown and blue clays when exposed to the air and dry, assume light tints." In this district, however, the blue and light clays are separated by a strongly marked line of a broken or waving form. The shape of the dividing line looks as if the upper surface of the blue beds had been exposed for some length of time, and had been subjected to the action of running water before the upper bed of light clay was laid down. In some places there are considerable quantities of gravel and small boulders mixed with the clay; in others, both the beds are comparatively free from stones of any description. The gravel is mostly found at the junction of the two beds, and particularly where the blue bed is cut into stream-like hollows or gulches. In the upper bed, on the sides of these depressions, I have found fragments of rock, rounded and water worn, and containing fossils of the Hudson River period. Mr. Weir's quarry, on the first lot of the first Range of Flamboro' West, is overlaid by ten feet of the light colored clay, containTM ing angular blocks. The blue clay is absent, but in one place, a small patch of red till appears, lying close to the rock. The top stratum is of a hard, light-colored limestone. This bed looks extremely like. as if there had been part of it cut away before the ice action set in. It has only been quarried in places; and the parts untouched, where exposed, present an edge smoothed and rounded off, and showing the glacial grooves in a beautiful condition and running in a perfect parallelism with this part of the escarpment. In the quarry I found no shells, but a few specimens of the coral favosites gothlandica, and several crystals of galena, from an inch to two inches in diameter. The band of broken material capping the Hamilton escarpment, is wanting in Mr. Weir's quarry. The precipice at West Flamboro,' according to the Geological Survey, is capped by blue and grey limestone, including bands of white buff and grey chert, and thickly studded with chert nodules, to a thickness of twenty feet.* Last year an attempt was made to bore an Artesian well at Dundas, and through the kindness of Mr. Bertram, I am enabled to present here, a section of this boring. The mouth of the well is in the talus of the mountain, and one hundred and fifty feet above lake level.. 5 Lorrain Shales (Blue Shale). 6 Utica Black Shales (Shale and black slate very friable) 7 Trenton Limestone to bottom of well..... Total.... Geology of Canada, page 327 |