84. 
would lie in it, so that the spray falling upon it after it is filled would not 
hhave one hundredth part of the mechanical power the first drops would 
have. If the gutter be three or four inches wide, and the same depth, the 
spray falling into it would, perhaps, only have the power of deepening the 
channel one inch ina very long period. This is a point Mr. Mackintosh 
seems to have overlooked. Among the natural phenomena he mentions are 
the Falls of Niagara. I remember that when I first read Sir Charles Lyell’s 
book I was delighted with his measurements of geological time, as illustrated 
by those Falls. He said he saw the river cutting its way through a series of 
rocks, and he found that the Falls retreated a few inches every year. By 
measuring the number of inches so cut away, he arrived at the conclusion 
that, at the very lowest computation, it must have taken the river over 
thirty thousand years to cut the length of channel it had excavated. Now, 
when I visited the Falls of Niagara and went to the bottom of the ravine, 
and passed along the ledge of rock that runs between the water and the rock, 
I found that there was a constant spray of water from the waterfall washing 
the face of the rock, and that the Fall thus acted on the face of the precipice of 
rock more or less according to the direction and force of the wind ; and I 
felt how much the amount of wear of the rock must depend upon influences 
which are not always taken into consideration. 
General G. Skene Hattowes (Acting Honorary Secretary).—I observed 
the same back action of the spray from the Fall when I was at Niagara, but, 
the weather being calm, it was not so excessive as some have described it 
to be. 
Rev. W. B. Gattoway, M.A.—Perhaps I may be permitted to remark 
that the glacial theory, as held by Mr., now Professor, James Geikie, amounts 
to something very astonishing. It supposes that in Scotland and in England 
—at least in the northern part of this country—there was a glacier—a con- 
tinuous one—of from 2,500 to 3,000 feet in thickness ; that in the whole of 
‘Switzerland, or at least the valley between the Alps and the Jura, the ice 
was piled up in an unbroken mass to, at least, the same thickness ; that in 
Sweden and Scandinavia, generally, the ice was 7,000 feet thick, and that 
in Connecticut, according to Professor Dana, the thickness of the ice was 
from 6,000 to 8,000 feet. Now, the great ice barrier at the antarctic pole was 
calculated by Sir James Ross to be 1,000 feet in thickness, so that in the 
estimates I have mentioned we have placed before us for belief something 
really prodigious. At one time, when it was the general opinion that a 
universal Deluge had covered the mountains, as the Scriptures relate, there 
was an objection made that there was not so much water as would produce 
that result. But this difficulty does not really exist to the same extent 
since Lyell affirmed that the depth of the water is fifteen times greater 
than the height of the land, and also, that two-thirds of the globe 
are covered by water. But what strikes me as an extraordinary change in 
the position taken upon this question is, that while the objection formerly 
made to the Scriptural account of the Deluge was that there was not enough 
water to cover the land, we are now asked to substitute for the water an 
