206 
work on water motors having been brought 
out shortly before his death. 
In appearance Professor Wood was a 
striking figure. His large, erect frame and 
his energetic manner at once commanded 
attention and respect. Socially he was a 
most genial and kindly man, full of patience 
and encouragement, especially for young 
men. He was of a somewhat retiring and 
domestic disposition, however, and mingled 
less with men of the world than might have 
been expected. Though honored by elec- 
tion to office in the scientific societies to 
which he belonged, he never sought per- 
sonal advancement. He was content with 
his chosen work in the class-room, and the 
remarkable success he attained in that 
work amply justifies the singular fidelity 
with which he devoted his life to it. 
IR. S2 We 
CURRENT NOTES ON PHYSIOGRAPHY. 
THE LABRADOR PENINSULA. 
Mucu interesting information about Lab- 
rador is to be found in an article by Low 
in the Annual Report of the Geological 
Survey of Canada for 1895 (Ottawa, 1897). 
The fiords of the Atlantic coast are de- 
seribed as valleys of denudation of very 
ancient origin, eroded when the elevation 
of the peninsula was greater than now. 
“Their remote antiquity is established by 
the deposition in their lower levels of un- 
disturbed sandstones of Cambrian age.” 
A similar explanation is given to the greater 
river valleys. The ‘banks’ for some fifteen 
miles off the coast are shallower than many 
of the fiords; they are explained as a 
terminal moraine, somewhat flattened out by 
floating ice andcurrents. At least a fourth 
of the plateau area is occupied by lakes 
of small depth confined in shallow val- 
leys by barriers of drift. Some of the 
larger and deeper lakes occupy ancient 
basins, floored with Cambrian strata. There 
is a lakeless plain of marine sands and 
SCIENCE. 
(N.S. Voz. VI. No. 136. 
clays carved by deep stream channels, 
extending inland for a hundred miles east- 
ward from James bay. Much is told about 
Hamilton river, with its Grand Falls, and 
Bowdoin* Cafion below them, from which a 
clear picture of the plateau region may be 
gained. Hrosion by ice is given a small 
measure ; its chief result being to rub down 
hills and fill neighboring depressions, thus 
decreasing local relief. ‘There is no eyi- 
dence to show that the glacier ever hollowed 
or scooped out deep depressions, as has been 
often stated to have occurred elsewhere.” 
The till is frequently arranged. in long low 
ridges, like drumlins, with nearly driftless 
tracts between them. LEskers are greatly 
developed, one having a length of nearly a 
hundred miles. They are ascribed to 
streams flowing on or below the ice when 
the glacial sheet had become practically 
stagnant. 
It is difficult to reconcile the statements 
noted above as to the age of the fiords, the 
greater valleys and the deeper lakes, with 
the rates of denudation in resistant rocks 
elsewhere, unless it be supposed that for 
most of geological time the Labrador plateau 
has been covered by an inert ice sheet, pro- 
tective of very ancient forms rather than 
productive of new forms; or unless it be 
supposed that the depressions were long 
ago made and filled and rather lately re- 
excavated. In any case, it is hardly pos- 
sible that ‘‘ the process of formation of these 
valleys has continued slowly from [Cam- 
brian time] to the present day by the agency 
of falling water and of frost.’ Does the 
earth’s surface exhibit any rocks resistant 
enough to retain significant slopes after so 
long an attack of the destructive subaerial 
forces ? 
THE CHICAGO ARPA. 
LryrreT? describes the Pleistocene fea- 
tures and deposits of the Chicago area 
*Bowdoin is unfortunately misspelled Bodwoin in 
the report and on the accompanying map of Labrador. 
