go JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



Stump, and we counted 380 distinct annual rings. There was a 

 decayed hollow at the heart one foot in diameter. We found a 

 living swarm of bees in the hollow crotch, and there were racoon 

 debris and pheasant roostings in part of the hollow. Reterence 

 also might be made here, when speaking of the attitude of these 

 trees, to a couplet in Pope's Windsor Forest, where the text reads in 

 some versions : 



" Tall trees arise that shun each others shades." 

 But in a recent American reprint, the twenty-first line of the poem 

 is thus given : 



" Thin trees arise that sun each others shades." 



In taking note of changes that, since the year 1850, have taken 

 place in the channels and banks of some of the streams that diver- 

 sify this district, a clue is afforded towards tracing the cause of the 

 peculiarities of contour and erosion-marks, that seem to have been 

 brought into existence long before the advent of the white man. 



In the outhne of the western bank of the Grand River, less 

 than a mile above the City of Brantford, extensive erosion by the 

 impact of floating masses of ice during the floods at the breakmg up 

 of winter has been accomplished since the date above mentioned. 



The slightly undulating surface of the south-west part of Bur- 

 ford Township is drained by Big Creek, that enters Lake Erie in 

 Long Point Bay ; and near the Village of New Durham, a survey of 

 the course of this stream forces the inference that the volume of 

 water once flowing lakeward between its banks must at some former 

 time have been much greater than what we witness at the present 

 day. For a stream, now only a few feet wide, meanders through 

 extensive flats that are inclosed by banks that in some spots attain 

 a height of 50 to 60 feet. These banks doubtless formed the shore 

 of the ancient stream, and a line drawn diagonally across the bends 

 of the creek strikes points where the argillaceous banks rise abruptly 

 and nearly perpendicularly from the surface of the waterflow, and 

 thus attests, in a convincing manner, that the impact of floating ice, 

 which, through its acquired momentum, disregards curves in the 

 streams, but strikes forcibly the steep shore, was iinpelled diagonally 

 down stream to the opposite side, where its delving and disinteg- 

 ratmg action was repeated. In those parts of the stream that are 



