134 REPORT—1868. 
design, busts in slate and ivory, and designs for iron railings to public buildings in 
Vancouver's Island have been executed by individuals of this tribe. Engravings 
of Assyrian sculptures in the ‘Illustrated London News’ have served them for 
copies of these objects in slate. Their language differs from that of all other Indian 
languages of North America, and is spoken with slight variations throughout the 
islands; the author stated his intention of giving the vocabulary he had noted 
down, in a general account of the Indian languages of North-western America 
which he was about to publish. No sort of cultivated plant is grown by the 
Hydahs except potatoes, which are produced in greater abundance than by any 
other Indian tribe, and are of excellent quality, 
On the Formation of Fiords, Canons, Benches, Prairies, and Intermittent 
Rivers. By R. Brown. 
With regard to fiords, or deep narrow inlets in hilly sea-coasts, the author pointed 
out that they existed only in high latitudes. They varied in length from two or 
three miles to one hundred or more, and were known by the different names of 
inlets, canals, fiords, and lochs. Their nature was everywhere similar, so much 
so as to suggest a common origin. The author had investigated them on the north- 
west coast of North America; the soundings in them showed a great depth of 
water, high precipitous clifls hemmed them in on both sides, and at their head a 
valley generally existed. They existed on the western side of Vancouver's Island, 
but not on the eastern, showing that the island once formed part of what is now 
British Columbia, its western coast being then the shore of the contiment. Jeryis 
Inlet might be taken as the type of these inlets; it is forty miles in length, while 
its width rarely exceeds one mile and a half; the depths below almost rival the 
heights of the precipitous sides ; bottom is rarely reached under 200 fathoms, even 
close to the shore. The author concluded that glaciers were the agency by which 
inlets were scooped out, in all parts of the world where they are nowseen. Every- 
where in British Columbia marks of ice-action are seen on the sides of the fiords. 
Not far from the heads of most of them glaciers are now found in the Coast Range 
and Cascade Mountains, and marks of old glacier-action can be seen 2000 to 3000 
feet below the summit, and even near the sea-margin. Caiions, or the deep ravines 
through which many rivers of Western America for many miles pursue their course, 
the author attributed to erosion by the fluviatile currents, the action of which 
was stronger during the period when glaciers filled the northern fiords, and when 
the atmospheric precipitation would be much greater over the whole region than it 
is now. Benches, or terrace-like formations on the sides of narrow river valleys, 
far above the present level of the rivers, were due to sudden sinkings of the level 
of the rivers, on the wearing or breaking down of rocky barriers which impeded 
their course, thus leaving the traces of their old beds in the form of “ benches.” _ 
The existence of Prairies, or treeless plains, in the interior of North America was 
attributed by the author to the same cause as the formation of steppes and deserts 
in other parts of the world, namely, the deficiency in the rainfall in the interior 
of continents. Under the head of ‘intermittent rivers” the author enumerated 
the streams of this nature that he had observed on the eastern side of the Cascade 
Mountains in Oregon and Washington Territory, and explained them by the general 
aridity caused by the interception of the rain-supply from the Pacific by the Cas- 
cade Range, by the sudden melting of the snows on the Rocky Mountains, where . 
the rivers mostly take their rise, and by the cayernous, volcanic nature of the sur- 
face. 
On the Great Prairies and the Prairie Indians. 
By W. Herwortn Dixon, F.L.8. 
On the Sepulchral Remains of Southern India, 
By Sir Waxrrer Exnior, A.S.., FLAS. 
In most parts of India ancient monuments of the dead are found, the relics of 
people that no longer exist, or whose descendants, if not wholly extinct, do not 
