THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 1 27 



greater than has been hitherto imagined, and may not this go to- 

 wards accounting for the fact that the salt of the Onondago group 

 is so free from foreign matter ? The writer, in saying this, knows 

 that the presence of such quantities of dolomite as the Niagara, 

 Guelph and Onondago groups present, represent also the with- 

 drawal of large quantities of the bitter chlorides, as calcium and 

 magnesium carbonates leaving sodium chloride disolved in the 

 ocean. Still it is far from improbable that the red shales and sand- 

 stones of the Medina and CHnton groups may have carried down 

 with them a large mass of the bitter, burning, tasting salts above 

 mentioned. The chemist knows how barium sulphate, when pre- 

 cipitated from copper or iron sulphate solution, is apt to carry cop- 

 per or iron with it, and many other like instances could be given. 

 Why then may not an immense mass of red clay or sand in a turbid 

 ocean, showing by its color the absence of organic life and ra])id 

 deposition ? why may not this have carried down matter which, un- 

 der other conditions, is not merely soluble but absolutely de- 

 liquiscent? 



April 25th, 1890, Col. C. C. Grant read a paper entitled, "Is 

 the Deluge a Myth ? " He took the ground that from geological 

 evidence it was impossible to accept the universality of the Deluge. 

 The fact of finding coral shells on lofty eminences did not prove 

 that their presence there was due to the so-called deluge covering 

 those eminences. It was his opinion that the mythical deluge is to 

 be looked for in the glacial period, when the great ice sheet was re- 

 ceeding — the period of the formation of vast inland lakes, and im- 

 mense floods, covered by the melting ice, of the great and local 

 glaciers — a period, too, of continental depression. 



Col. C. C. Grant, A. T. Neill, 



Chair?jian. Secretary. 



