42 The Edmonton Beds 



qlay, under the action of rain, or frost, cave off 

 in great avalanches of shaken up material that 

 rapidly dsintegrate and is carried off by the 

 rains to the Red Deer River, where the high 

 water hurries it on to augment the sediment ac- 

 cumulated by the lake or river's mouth or Lake 

 Winnipeg itself. 



Often acres of the margin of the prairies slide 

 down and fill a coulee, or drop into the river, 

 through which a passage is rapidly cut and the 

 mass is shoved on by other masses behind, until 

 it has all been carried away. Every time it rains 

 the fine clay and sand dissolves like soft soap, 

 and as mud is carried into the river. The deep- 

 er canyons have their ridges bisected by lateral 

 ravines until they meet and form buttes and 

 knolls that in turn weather into hay-stacks or 

 sugar-loaf mounds that are being constantly re- 

 duced by wind and rain and frost, until now, 

 often we find a perfect labyrinth of intricate 

 gorges, buttes, towers, and table-lands of every 

 conceivable form, strewn, with traveled bould- 

 ers, from the prairie above, or masses of bog iron 

 that have withstood the disintegrating action of 

 the elements. But for this constant corroding 

 of the rocks and the consequent recession of 

 cliffs, we would know nothing of the wealth of 

 extinct forms that lie here in their last sleep. 

 Nothing of the fauna and flora of the day when 

 these dry bones were full of life and vigor, when 

 the marshes and lowlands echoed to the formida- 



