49o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



feeling, now that the novelty of the sensation is past, has been fol- 

 lowed by an intellectual resignation. Even the claims of posterity, 

 the passing pang that our descendants may not see the mighty cadence 

 of water as our eyes see it, quite relax all hold upon us in view of the 

 fact that after all this may not happen just as represented. 



The heavy bed of tough dolomite limestone at the crest of the 

 falls, which is the occasion of their existence, lies above a thick mass of 

 soft shale which easily caves in under the rebound of the falling waters, 

 and by so doing becomes the chief cause of the breaking down of the 

 crest and of the cataract's retreat. This bed of shale runs down into 

 the earth in the direction from which the water comes, the south. 

 It will be out of the reach of the cataract after a while, leaving an 

 escarpment wholly composed of the tough limestone, which will make 

 the problem of retreat thenceforward quite a different one from what it 

 is to-day. There are, moreover, fifty-seven feet of hard dolomites above 

 the crest of the falls over whose edges the water now descends in 

 rapids. As the cataract moves southward by the falling away of its 

 rock face it will grow higher instead of lower, until after it has passed 

 the parting of the waters above Goat Island. Indeed it may become 

 fifty feet higher than it now is and so firmly upheld by the heavy 

 masonry of limestones that caving in must cease and further retreat 

 will be reduced to its slowest terms. 



As to the crustal movement whose tendency is to spill the waters 

 westward out of the Erie basin, Ave may observe that the earth's crust 

 is most uneasy and its movements most uncertain. Nearly every place 

 is going either up or down, few are in a state of actual quietude. 

 These movements have every variety of period; some may be secular, 

 some are known to be relatively brief. Fifty years ago the shore at 

 Perce on the Gaspe coast was going down, the fishermen had to aban- 

 don their drying stages and build them farther up the beach, but 

 to-day the shore is coming up again and excavations for the new 

 stages reveal the remains of the old ones which have been buried in 

 the sea for nearly two generations. There is no knowing when the 

 movement now affecting the Niagara region will cease. 



Public resignation over the natural but distant fate of Niagara 

 has grown to public concern at its immediate future. It is alleged 

 that the present and contemplated industrial development at Niagara 

 Falls immediately imperils the integrity and perpetuity of that great 

 spectacle. Is this true? If it is, the American and Canadian public 

 who hold this phenomenon in trust for the world ought to know it. 

 However this question may be received and however answered by the 

 interested producer or the disinterested public, it has on more than 

 one occasion been flatly and formally before the people of the State 

 of New York and of the Province of Ontario and has had to be met. 



