QUEBEC.
The Pleistocene of Quebec was described by Logan in 1863 (Geol. Canada, pp. 917–926) and by J. W. Dawson, 1894, in his “Canadian Ice Age.” Dawson divided the epoch, as represented in Canada, into the early Pleistocene, the mid-Pleistocene, and the later Pleistocene. He did not accept the glacial theory as it is now understood, admitting only great local glaciers. His early Pleistocene deposits embraced the great bulk of the boulder clays. His mid-Pleistocene represents an interglacial period, during which were deposited the marine Leda clays, Saxicava sands, and their fresh-water equivalents. The climate was supposed to be milder than at present. During the later Pleistocene there was to some extent a recurrence of local glaciation and of deposition of boulder clay. This stage was followed, according to Dawson, by the Early Modern, which he regarded as the age of the mammoth and mastodon.
Mr. J. Stansfield has described with some detail the Pleistocene and Recent deposits of the island of Montreal (Mem. 73, Geol. Surv. Canada, 1915). The boulder clay is of variable thickness and does not appear to be divisible into beds of different epochs. The Leda and Saxicava deposits are present. When the latter were laid down the region about Montreal was depressed about 600 feet below its present elevation. This has been confirmed by Goldthwait (Summary Rep. for 1913, p. 211). Later it began to rise; and Stansfield thinks that when the elevation had reached about 100 feet less than that of the present the water of the St. Lawrence at that point had become fresh. He found some apparent evidences of a recurrence of glaciation after the Champlain stage, but, on the whole, left the question undecided. He published a list of about 85 species of marine invertebrate fossils, collected from the Leda clay about Montreal, and 22 species obtained from the Saxicava sands. Besides the invertebrates secured from the Leda clays at that place, there are two vertebrates, Phoca grœnlandica (p. [22]) and Delphinapterus leucas, or D. vermontana (p. [18]). At Rivière du Loup, in Temiscouata County, whale remains were reported in 1894 (p. [18]), which were thought to belong to Delphinapterus leucas. At Metis, Rimouski County, a jawbone of a whale has been discovered in the shelly marl of the lower terrace (p. [19]); whether or not it belonged to Megaptera boöps is not certain. The specimen of the former species was described by Leidy in 1856.
According to Logan’s report of 1863 (Geol. Canada, p. 920), the single bone was found in a brickyard. At the same place was found some vertebræ of the whale. At Bic, Rimouski County, has been found a nearly complete skeleton of a walrus, at an elevation of more than 100 feet (p. [21]). Dawson (Canadian Record Sci., 1895, vol. VI, p. 352) described a nearly complete skeleton of the whale which had been found at Montreal in the Leda clay, 22 feet below the surface. This Leda clay was supposed by Dawson to have been deposited at a depth of from 50 to 80 fathoms, which depth, he said, corresponded approximately to the marine shore-lines at Montreal at an elevation of about 470 feet above sea-level, and to the sea-beach at Smith’s Falls, above referred to. Hence at the time that the whale was buried the mountain at Montreal was only a rocky islet in the sea which prevailed then over the region from the Laurentian hills on the north to the highlands of Quebec, south of the St. Lawrence.
At Tétreauville, in Ottawa County, on Ottawa River, have been found some bones, supposed to belong to the harbor seal, Phoca vitulina.