176 Bibliographical Notices. 



drawback being its difficulty of access ; and it gives one the most 

 favourable anticipations of the future usefulness of the 65,000 square 

 miles of similar country which, as calculated by Captain Palliser, 

 form the fertile belt in British North America. Agricultural opera- 

 tions in this region seem, however, to be exposed to a drawback 

 w^hich will appear rather novel to English colonists, in the spread of 

 a species of Locust, described by Dr. Harris under the name of 

 Acrydium femur-rubrum. These insects were very destructive in the 

 Red River settlement in 1819, but occurred only in small numbers 

 from that year to 1857 (the year of the expedition to Red River), when 

 they appeared in vast quantities over an immense extent of country, 

 in some places devouring everything green that came in their way, 

 and migrating from place to place in such enormous crowds as to give 

 a peculiar appearance to the sky. Many notices of the occurrence 

 of these destructive creatures will be found in Mr. Hind's narrative. 

 Vast as is the surface still covered by water in the region of the 

 great American Lakes, there is sufficient evidence, according to Mr. 

 Hind's observations, of its having formerly extended over a far greater 

 area and gradually receded. Long ranges of hills, generally forming 

 the escarpments of plateaux of elevated prairie, run more or less 

 parallel to the general outline of the lake basin, and these have every 

 appearance of having at no very distant period formed the successive 

 shores of an enormous body of water ; raised beaches and terraces are 

 by no means of uncommon occurrence ; and most of the rivers take 

 their course through broad valleys of erosion, which must have been 

 formed by streams of far greater volume than is attained by the 

 highest floods of the present day. We can understand how this 

 immense amount of surface-water may have been drained off"; but 

 Mr. Hind describes another kind of diminution of water-supply 

 which is not quite so intelligible. His investigation of the Assinni- 

 boine shows that the quantity of water discharged by that river into 

 the Red River is but little more than half that passing Fort Ellice at 

 a distance of 280 miles from its outlet, — the amounts being 9,979,200 

 cubic feet per hour at Fort Ellice, and only 5,702,400 at Lane's Post, 

 distant 22 miles from the confluence with Red River. The most sin- 

 gular part of the business is, that the amount of water in the river 

 increases more than 25 per cent, during the first half of its course from 

 Fort Ellice, — the quantity passing the mouth of the Little Souris 

 being 12,899,040 feet per hour. Thus, according to Mr. Hind, con- 

 siderably more than half the water passing the mouth of the Little 

 Souris river must be lost in some way during the passage of the 

 Assinniboine from that point to Lane's Post, a distance of 118 miles. 

 Mr. Hind supposes the loss to take place by evaporation ; but although 

 the river receives no considerable affluents during the latter half of 

 its course, this cause seems quite inadequate to the production of an 

 eff'ect of such magnitude, and we can only suppose that the waters 

 must find some other outlet which has escaped the notice of the 

 explorers. 



With regard to the aboriginal population of Rupert's Land, we 

 find many interesting notices scattered through the pages of Mr. 



