334 On the Falls of Niagara. 



future place of the falls when they will be in the strata c and d, and 

 not as at present in d and e. c siliceous limestone, d geodiferous 

 limestone, e friable shale. 



The vertical scale is of course greatly exaggerated beyond the 

 actual proportions, it being in all such diagrams, impossible to repre- 

 sent the distances and the heights in their true ratios. 



A still further retrogression will bring the cataract altogether out 

 of the inferior shale the thickness of which at present is ninety feet, 

 and will cause the escarpment of the falls to consist only of the over- 

 lying limestone beds, and ultimately of a still superior stratum, a 

 tough silicious limestone which occupies the surface from lake Erie 

 down almost to the falls. It seems a plausible conjecture, that en- 

 tering as it thus certainly must, a new series of beds possessing very 

 different relations of hardness, friability and thickness from those 

 which compose the present escarpment, both the rate and the mode 

 of retrogression will be materially modified. Should the upper stra- 

 tum instead of being as it now is, the hardest, become, as it possi- 

 bly may before the twenty one miles are travelled over, the softest, 

 there can be little doubt that the present single and majestic fall will 

 divide itself into several cataracts at successive elevations. Niagara 

 will then be almost a counterpart of Trenton falls, but with far more 

 magnificent dimensions. 



In conclusion it may be well to notice another false impression of 

 Mr. Fairholme. He speaks of the fossil remains of the Elephant 

 and Mastodon of North America being deposited when the waters 

 of Niagara were first set in motion, that is according to him, when 

 ' this section of the continent had just emerged from the ocean ; and 

 he attributes their position and their shattered state to the rush of 

 waters simultaneous by his account with that emergence. To make in 

 this manner those races of animals equally ancient with our bitumin- 

 ous coal-fields, may consist with Mr. Fairholme's peculiar views of 

 celerity of deposition in strata, but no geologist who examines the 

 features of this continent can acquiesce in such a theory. The di- 

 luvial or more properly alluvial deposits in which such organic re- 

 mains invariably occur in North America, cover alike all our forma- 

 tions, even the newest tertiary, and are of course separated from the 

 coal formation as to time by a vast series of intervening periods. 



It is therefore quite erroneous to consider as contemporaneous, 

 two events so distant as the appearance of the coal and the forma- 

 tion of the diluvium. 



