106 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
which it is necessary to assign a greater length of time than 1,000 years. 
They are wholly alluvial, and only just above the level of the freshets 
and high tides, and were often, before they were dyked, during the 
annual freshets. extensively inundated. And although they are in their 
higher parts now thickly covered with timber, I have not been able to 
find or hear of a tree more than a few feet in diameter or of more than 
three or four centuries growth at most. It might occur to some here 
that the best way to get at the age of the islands would be to ascertain 
the rate at which the deposits of the Fraser accumulate at this point; 
but a little experience of the ways of the Fraser would soon convince 
them that this would be no easy task. To begin with, there is no uni- 
form rate of deposit ; the amount of detritus brought down by the river 
depends altogether. upon causes beyond our control or calculation ; the 
quantity brought down sometimes in one year exceeding that of any 
other half dozen. Last year was an instance of the kind ; and cases like 
last year happen every now and again at uncertain intervals. If amount 
of matter brought down by the water counted for anything, then islands 
as large or larger than those now existing might have been formed, if cir- 
cumstances had been favourable, during last year’s freshet. It will easily 
be seen from this statement how useless it is to go to the river for infor- 
mation. If, then, I am correct in estimating the period which has elapsed 
since the flats ceased to support shell-fish and took on the form of islands 
at a thousand years, something like this period has, in all probability, 
elapsed since this camping-ground was abandoned by its owners, if on 
account of the extinction of their chief food supply at this point ; and 
possibly a very much longer period if from the other cause suggested, 
which much of the osteological evidence gathered from these middens 
seems to support, viz., the invasion of a hostile people. But placing the 
abandonment at the latest possible date consistent with the presence and 
condition of the stumps, say 500 years ago, when to this has been added 
the period covered by the formation of the midden mass, we still find 
ourselves in the possession, in this extensive pile of refuse, of a monument 
of the past second to none in the country in antiquity. That the accu- 
mulation of such a heap of human refuse as this midden presents, to make 
no mention of others almost as large, occupied a very considerable period 
of time there can be no doubt, I think. It possesses many features of the 
Danish kjoekken-moeddinger, which led such eminent investigators as 
Worsaae, Steenstrup and Lubbock to regard the period of formation of 
those well-known piles as extending, in the words of the learned author of 
the “ Origin of the Aryans,” over “many centuries at least, more probably 
several millenniums.” I am not unjustified, therefore, in claiming a very 
considerable period of time for the accumulation of these similar and 
much larger heaps of British Columbia. Viewing it, therefore, from the 
most conservative standpoint, it may be reasonably conceded, | think, 
