1891-92]. SECOND MEETING. 5 
the Councils of Simcoe County, Midland City and Penetanguishene, the 
Grand Trunk Railway Company and the Indians of Christian Island, 
asking those bodies to unite for this purpose.” 
Votes of thanks were passed to the Mayor and Council, to Chief 
Assance, John Monague, Father Laboureau, and Mr. Walter J. Keating 
for their efforts in promoting the success of the meetings. 
FIRST MEETING. 
First Meeting, 7th November, 1891, the President in the chair. 
The President delivered his inaugural address: “A Critical Review of 
the Enterprise of Christopher Columbus.” Previous discoveries by the 
Cabots were sketched, the disastrous and murderous government of the 
Spaniards in America alluded to, and the motives attributed to Columbus, 
not altogether unselfish, dealt with. After the address, a photograph in 
colors of the solar spectrum, thought to be the first ever exhibited in 
America, was shown. 
SECOND MEETING. 
Second Meeting, 14th November, 1891, Mr. J. Davies Barnett in the 
chair. 
Donations since the Annual Meeting 68, Exchanges 1731. 
A report of the summer work of the Biological Section was read. 
The following were elected members :—Alfred Boyd, V. B. Wadsworth, 
William Ker, M. B. Aylsworth, Henry Wade, T. C. Jackson, Milner 
Hart, Daniel Clark, M.D., Henry E. Caxton, Thomas M’Crosson, W. 
J. Keating, A. C. Osborne, A. P. Coleman, Hon. J. B. Robinson. 
Mr. W. J. Smith read a paper on “ The Formation of Niagara River.” 
He opened his reading with recounting the theories held by Sir Charles 
Lyell, Mr. Blackwell, Prof. Gilbert, Prof. Scovel, and others, all varying 
in statement of method, but all agreeing on the one point that the 
“ Gorge,” from Lewiston to the Falls, has been due to the action of the 
waters eroding the rocks backwards. Mr. Smith contends that facts do 
not substantiate the theory so held in any one particular, and he first 
takes the ground that Niagara river should not be the only instance in the 
world where waters in similar positions have eroded their rock bed. In 
support of his non-erosion theory, he recites parallel instances in a num- 
ber of well-known falls within the Dominion—coeval in point of time 
