TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION FR. 529 
without attendant evils more disastrous than the floods themselves, afford 
one of the most complex and vital series of questions with which the American 
nation has yet been engaged. 
Although mountain snow-fall and local rains are the obvious causes of 
flood conditions, both may be excessive without producing such results. 
Observations show that many combinations of circumstances which tend to 
hasten or retard the outflow of headwaters give rise to a varied series of 
highly interesting and far-reaching effects, either involving the low-lands of 
the entire valley country between the east and west mountain ranges in a 
brief but destructive deluge, or distributing local floods over widely separated 
districts, or yet again by the slower process of run-off, showing how the 
heaviest precipitation may be carried to the Gulf of Mexico with no accusing 
record of overflow disaster. 
Consequences peculiar to the various conditions must inevitably develop in 
corresponding ratio of extent and importance, which raises the problem of 
control to a position of magnitude second to no other, and involving serious 
future dangers as well as magnificent benefits. 
2. The Nomenclature of the Islands and Lands of Arctic Canada. 
By James Wuire. 
3. The Hudson Bay Route to Europe. 
By Rosert Bet, I.8.0., M.D., F.R.S. 
The author emphasised the advantages of this route and the important 
eccnomic results which would follow its development. It was by far the 
shortest possible route from the centre of the prairie provinces, as its general 
course was that of a segment of a great circle. The proportion of land-haul 
was shorter than that of any other route. More than 1,000 miles of its water 
transportation is within the British possessions, Hudson Bay being a mare 
clausum. 
Heretofore various circumstances had tended to prejudice the public 
against this route. An effort had been made to associate the bay with the 
Arctic regions, and to make the public believe that the season for navigaticn 
was too short, and that floe ice would be a more serious obstacle than it 
really is. It is, however, true that in the days of sailing ships even small 
quantities of loose ice did sometimes interrupt their progress, but steam 
navigation has changed all that and put an entirely new aspect on the 
problem. The writer had passed through the strait nine different times, and 
did not think that the ice would seriously impede its navigation by ordinary 
steamships. It was to be regretted that so much nonsense had been talked 
and written by persons who had no independent knowledge of this subject. 
The delay in attempting to open up the route had been due to questions 
of public expedience, and not to any actual or known natural obsfacles. The 
writer had for more than thirty years advocated the opening of this route 
at the earliest possible time as being of the greatest importance to the 
development of the trade and populating of the Canadian North-West. The 
immediate increase in the value of the wheat lands alone, as soon as a 
railway is constructed to the bay, would amount to about $100,000,000. 
Live stock, dairy products, coarse grains, and several kinds of other agri- 
cultural products could then be profitably exported, and their value would 
perhaps more than equal that of the wheat. 
The building of a railway to Hudson Bay has only now become a living 
question on account of the existing railways being inadequate to transport 
all the ontgoing freight offering. As soon as a Hudson Bay railway is in 
1909, MM 
