182 Canadian Record of Science. 



try at a time so recent that the existing shells, fishes and 

 cetaceans were already living in our waters, and under a 

 climate so severe that our hills were mantled with snow and 

 ice. Such facts present to us a truly wonderful record of 

 geological and climatic change. The communication of 

 Col. Grant on Anticosti was of especial interest, both on 

 account of the position of that island and of the comparative 

 want of information respecting it. As might be expected, 

 the appearances were altogether those of marine glacial 

 deposits. Along with these papers I would place that of 

 Mr. Drummond on the origin of prairies, at a time when the 

 glacial subsidence and cold had passed away, and when 

 swamps and forests were taking the j)lace of ice-laden seas, 

 and were themselves passing into the dry prairie condition 

 of the present time. Under the same geological head we 

 may also place Dr. Harrington's paper on new discoveries 

 respecting Canad ian minerals, which directed our attention 

 to the fact that there are new chemical and crystallographic 

 points to be ascertained by careful and accurate observation 

 even with reference to well known mineral species, and 

 which lead to interesting comparisons with the minerals of 

 other countries. 



Curiously enough, two of our ethnological papers were 

 not on Canadian ethnology, but on the origin and physical, 

 characters of the Ainos of Japan, whom Prof. Penhallow 

 had an opportunity to study during his residence in that 

 remarkable country. The Ainos are a primitive race, 

 allied apparently more nearly to the older European peoples 

 than to the Turanians of eastern Asia, and suggesting that 

 in Japan the order of succession of races seems to have been 

 the reverse of that in Europe and western Asia, a fact 

 which, if conclusively established, would have important 

 bearings on our views of ethnology. We had also, however, 

 a communication from a correspondent in the West, Mr. C. 

 N. Bell, on the mounds of our North-western territory, 

 which seem to show that these industrious races of primi- 

 tive Indians who cultivated the valleys of the Mississippi and 

 Ohio, and worked the copper mines of Lake Superior, were 

 early colonists of the plains of the North-west. These 



