APPLETONS' 



POPULAR SCIENCE 



MONTHLY. 



JUNE, 1899. 



NEW METHOD OF ESTIMATING THE AGE OF NIAGARA 



FALLS. 



BY G. FREDERICK WRIGHT. 



BOTH the interest and the importance of the subject make it 

 worth while to follow out every clew that may lead to the ap- 

 proximate determination of the age of Niagara Falls. During this 

 past season, in connection with some work done for the New York 

 Central Railroad upon their branch line which runs along the eastern 

 face of the gorge from Bloody Run to Lewiston, I fortunately came 

 into possession of data from which an estimate of the age of the falls 

 can be made entirely independent of those which have heretofore 

 been current. The bearing and importance of the new data can best 

 be seen after a brief resume of the efforts heretofore made to solve 

 this important problem. 



In 1841 Sir Charles Lyell and the late Prof. James Hall visited 

 the falls together; but, having no means of determining the rate 

 of recession, except from the indefinite reports of residents and guides, 

 they could place no great confidence in the " guess," made by Sir 

 Charles Lyell, that it could not be more than one foot a year. As 

 the length of the gorge from Lewiston up is about seven miles, the 

 time required for its erosion at this rate would be thirty-five thousand 

 years. The great authority and popularity of Lyell led the general 

 public to put more confidence in this estimate than the distinguished 

 authors themselves did. Mr. Bakewell, another eminent English 

 geologist, at about the same time estimated the rate of the recession 

 as threefold greater than Lyell and Hall had done, which would re- 

 duce the time to about eleven thousand years. 



But, to prepare the way for a more definite settlement of the 

 VOL. LV. 11 



