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Prairies of Manitoba. 41 
nearer Fort Ellice. In the vicinity of Kinbrae, the surface 
soil is a sandy loam with ridges of loam mixed with gravel. 
A well sunk here on George B. Fisher’s farm, gave a section 
showing in descending order, one foot of sandy loam, eleven 
feet of clay, with a few rounded boulders in it, and thirty — 
feet of sand, which grew coarser towards the bottom. At 
Langenburg, another well gave, before the sand was 
reached, one hundred and sixty feet of wet sticky clay, 
holding boulders. There was considerable difficulty in 
securing water at this latter place until this depth was 
reached. At neither place was there any appearance of 
layers of black loam as at Portage la Prairie and Winnipeg. 
The boulders here and at Birtle are relatively small, sel- 
dom exceeding two feet across, and, with the gravel, have 
rather the worn appearance resulting from the action of 
ice than the rounded look which the water on a sea or lake 
coast would give them. Both boulders and gravel in the 
neighborhood of Kinbrae are Laurentian, intermixed with 
some of a limestone which weathers a buff in colour. One 
of these larger limestone boulders was heavily striated and 
was, otherwise, worn smooth to the condition of a slab. 
Nearly all of the sloughs were dry, as a result of the 
drought this year, and some were, like the dry marshes 
near Westbourne already alluded to, dotted with the dead 
shells of Limnea and other fresh water mollusks, 
CONCLUSIONS, 
The conclusions I have formed are, that the Manitoba 
prairies east of the Pembina and Riding mountains are the 
most recently formed, and are still undergoing a process of 
extension in the great marshes still existing and on the 
shallow lake margins, through the annual growth and 
decay of the luxuriant grasses growing there. There had 
been two or three depressions of the land in the course of 
the formation of these prairies, during each of which, 
deposits of sediment, carried down by the muddy northern 
and western rivers, were made over the loam formed by 
such decaying grasses, giving thus the alternate loam and 
clay now observable. ‘There is no evidence to show that 
