THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 103 
London give one the idea of a people emerging from barbarism,” re- 
marked an English friend of mine, ‘‘but I never noticed anywhere 
such an offensive aspect as the numerous glaring red brick houses 
presented to one’s view here ; and you cannot be congratulated on 
the dull, sombre, cheerless coloring of much of the material used 
in more pretentious public edifices.” It may not be flattering to our 
taste, yet it is better for us to learn what others say of us. 
My friend Mr. Neill (our Vice-President) recently suggested that 
I may have overlooked the circumstance often noticed that when 
cold water from the hose is thrown on burning buildings, the hardest 
freestone is apt to fracture, as he noticed when the McInnes 
block was gutted by fire some years ago. I donot think any 
stone, not even igneous Trap would successfully resist the com- 
-bined action of fire and water under similar circumstances. In pre- 
historic time the Mound Builders, (or, perhaps, the ancestors of 
the American red man) discovered that water flung on heated rocks 
caused them to disintegrate. Dr. Spencer, F. G. S., when employed 
as a mining engineer at Lake Superior, informs us the Mound 
Builders sunk pits in the solid rock fifty feet deep, also drove 
galleries in the mines by heating the stone to a high temperature 
and throwing cold water on it, which caused it to crack. The 
original inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula 2,000 years ago, quarried 
tin in the same manner, and charcoal is frequently found, together 
with such heavy stone sledges and hammers as at Superior, in 
ancient Irish mines. Dr. Spencer clearly proves there is no founda- 
tion for the assertion so frequently heard that the American red man 
had no knowledge of the native copper mines when the whites 
arrived here. 
Sept. zoth, 1892. 
NOTES ON GRIMSBY EXCURSION, AND THE SILURIAN ROCKS 
IN THE VICINITY. 
Disappointed at the absence of an old friend and brother 
geologist at Grimsby, on enquiry from an acquaintance, I was in- 
formed the water was so high, owing to the recent heavy rain, that I 
would find it perhaps impossible to proceed to the first “ fall,” 
much less to the last one, if I had any intention of reaching them 
through the rock bed. Under the circumstances I concluded 
it would be better to judge for myself. With great difficulty I suc- 
