65 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



subject, or giving power to the civic fathers to frame suitable by-laws 

 to meet the case. 



Since writing the foregoing, the bay has been covered with nearly 

 two feet of ice, and it occurred to me that it would be well to test 

 the water while oxygen was nearly entirely excluded from it, as well 

 as to test the water from melted ice taken from the bay. To do 

 this I got a bottle of water from a point away to the east of the 

 Cathcart street sewer, and another from the place where they get the 

 ice used in the city. I got ice from both places as well. As there 

 could be very little oxidation the water proved to be as bad, if not 

 worse than No. 5 of our former testings. There was very little, if 

 any, difference between the two specimens. 



There is, I think, a general feeling that water, in freezing, 

 (particularly if there be a considerable depth of water), does not 

 take up impurities to any great extent. Housewives tell us that 

 water from melted ice is always soft, even if taken from bodies of 

 water known to be hard. Now, if the carbonate and sulphate of 

 calcium of hard water are found absent in the ice frozen on such 

 water, why may we not conclude that other compounds held in 

 solutions would also be absent ? Arguing from that conclusion, I 

 tested the ice from the two pomts named and found it compara- 

 tively pure — much purer than the water from the hydrants, so that I 

 think we need have no hesitation about using the ice from the bay. 



RACE IDENTITY OF THE OLD AND NEW 

 WORLDS. 



By William Glyndon. 



The subject I will endeavor to discuss before you to-night is 

 one on which there has been much theorizing, much conjecture ; one 

 that may or may not have hitherto engaged your attention, viz : 

 The race identity of the first colonizers of the so-called New World ; 

 more particularly of those parts known as Mexico, Central America, 

 and Peru. That all these countries have been the seat of an antique 

 and advanced civilization, is now an universal concedence. In what 

 that civilization consisted, or whence its birth, is yet a problem to 



