290 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



this interesting subject are wanting ; and these are not easily made 

 on this iron-hound and earthquake-shaken coast, where there has been 

 so little low and level land upon which Champlain clays could be 

 deposited. 



That this portion of the continent like the Eastern side has been 

 higher than now, we learn from the deeply-excavated channels of 

 the Golden Gate, the straits of Carquines, the mouth of the Colum- 

 bia, the Canal De Haro, etc. But this erosion was produced in part 

 if not altogether in Tertiary times. At Shoalwater Bay and about 

 Steilacoom, there are raised beaches, apparently of ancient date, but 

 farther south the changes of level have been so frequent and local 

 that nothing like system has been educed from a comparison of the 

 old shore-lines. 



Taken as a whole, the glacial inscriptions of the "West coast, as 

 studied by King and Le Conte in California, and myself in Oregon, 

 prove an Ice period as distinctly as do the glacial marks of the At- 

 lantic coast and the Mississippi Valley ; but the peculiar topography 

 of the Western country has made the record a somewhat different one. 



From the foregoing facts it seems to me that we are justified in 

 concluding : 



1. That however simple and plausible the Lyellian hypothesis may 

 be, or however ingenious the extension or application of it suggested 

 by Dana, it is not sustained by any proof, and the testimony of the 

 rocks seems to be decidedly against it. 



2. Though much may yet be learned from a more extended and 

 careful study of the glacial phenomena of all parts of both hemispheres, 

 the facts already gathered seem to be incompatible with any theory 

 yet advanced which makes the Ice period simply a series of telluric 

 phenomena, and so far strengthens the arguments of those who look 

 to extraneous and cosmical causes for the origin of these phenomena. 



-*- 



A FITTING RECOGNITION OF AMERICAN SCIENCE. 



PRESENTATION OF THE EUMFORD MEDAL BY THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF 

 SCIENCE TO DR. DRAPER FROM THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY. 



AT the six hundred and eighty-ninth meeting of this body, held 

 March 8, 1876, the chairman of the Rumford Committee intro- 

 duced the special business of the evening, and handed to the Presi- 

 dent, Hon. Charles Francis Adams, the Rumford medals (in gold and 

 silver), on each of which had been engraved the following inscription : 

 " Awarded by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to John 

 W. Draper, for his researches in radiant energy, May 25, 1875." 

 In presenting the medals the President said : 



