No. 7.] GEOLOGICAL NOTES. 429 



pool than New York, has been happily called by Prof. H. Y. 

 Hind, the Archangel of the West, The mouth of the Churchill, 

 however, although somewhat further north, offers far superior 

 natural advantages, and may more fitly challenge the title. It 

 will undoubtedly be the future shipping port for the agricultural 

 products of the vast north-west territory, and the route by which 

 emiorrants will enter the country. 



" Before leaving this quarter I must allude to the praisewor- 

 thy efforts of some of the Western States, especially Nebraska and 

 Minnesota, to encourage the planting on the great plains by pre- 

 miums, in which they have been followed by our own Province 

 of Manitoba. Many years must elapse before the full climatic 

 effects can be realized, but in time they cannot be doubtful, and 

 with the impending disappearance of the buffalo, will disappear 

 much of that arid treeless region, embracing nearly 600,000 

 square miles, which he now wanders over, and assists to keep 

 bare by so doing. On the other hand, the short-sighted and des- 

 tructive habit of burning off the prairie grasses to promote a 

 young growth, increases with settlement, and is chargeable with 

 incredible mischief. These fires have the curious effect, when they 

 extend into wooded regions, of helping to exterminate the moie 

 slow-growing and valuable descriptions of timber, and favouring 

 the prevalence of the more worthless quick-growing kinds. But 

 the Indians are even more chargeable with them than the whites, 

 and the traveller encounters few more melancholy sights than a 

 forest of charred and lifeless trunks extending; over an area as 

 large as a county, the fruit perhaps of a signal from one band to 

 another. " 



GEOLOGICAL NOTES OR ABSTRACTS OF RECENT 



PAPERS 



By T. Sterry Hunt, LL.D., F.R.S. 



I. THE TACONIC SYSTEM IN GEOLOGY. 



(Abstract of a paper read before the National Academy of Sciences at 



Washington, April 18, 1880.) 



The existence of a series of stratified rocks in the Appalachian 

 Valley, intermediate in age between the older crystalline or 

 Primitive schists and the Palaeozoic loaks of the New York 

 system, was taught by Eaton and maintained by Emmons, whose 



