THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. SI 



carbonate of lime which binds the pebbles and sand together would 

 likely act as a preservative at the Iroquois beach. 



Although unsuccessful in this instance, personally I do not doubt 

 for a moment that the red men lived in North America before the 

 Mammoth became extinct. The proof seems too strong to be 

 affected by carping denial or charges of fraudulent manufacture in 

 recent times by white men. " Doctors, parsons " (and geologists are 

 not included), remarks the late Judge Haliburton (Sam Slick), " do 

 not meet face to face like these gentry (J. E. Sawyers), and then 

 shake hands like good fellows, after a fair, stand-up fight. They fire 

 long shots at their opponents when their backs are turned, and insert 

 scalping, cutting and venemous articles in works devoted to science 

 and defamation. Your parson sends to religious newspapers, in a 

 truly charitable spirit, anonymous communications displaying scanty 

 sympathies with sinners, which they believe all to be who differ from 

 them." 



Many centuries probably have passed since the primitive forest 

 first appeared on the brow of the escarpment south of the city. The 

 glacial till rests on the polished and striated beds of the Niagara 

 chert. The surface soil above that again is so exceedingly thin that 

 one is surprised that so little decayed vegetation is shown there. Did 

 the local glaciers linger longer here than we suppose ? or was the 

 re-foresting, after the great ice sheet retreated, slowly progressive ? 

 How long since they disappeared we cannot tell. " In a certain 

 sense it may be said," remarks Sir A. Geikie, " the ice age still exists 

 among the snow fields and glaciers of Europe." 



In an apparently undisturbed portion of the till at the city 

 quarry I extracted a few years ago an irregular-shaped piece of 

 polished chert with a deep-cut groove (V) in the centre (there is one 

 also on the opposite side not so well marked). While it presents the 

 appearance of human workmanship, this may be deceptive. The 

 grooving and polishing may be owing to ice passing over and attach- 

 ing it to its base. There are no indications that roots of trees pene- 

 trated the subsoil there ; the blue clay (weathered) was quite hard 

 about it. I recently learned that a flint arrow-point was discovered 

 by some workmen employed by Mr. C. Myles in sinking the foun- 

 dation of a row of houses at the foot of his property on Hannah 

 street, in the red Medina clay. The land in rear is very steep, and 



