Science, Geology and Physics 



attracted considerable attention as a new departure, and at the 1898 

 time Prof. James Geikie, who is well known to be one of the pencer 

 leading glacialists, expressed himself as follows, under date 

 June 21, 1881 : "I have always had misgivings as to glacial 

 erosion of the Great Lakes, . . . and now your most inter- 

 esting paper comes to throw additional doubt upon the theory 

 in question. Possibly those who have upheld that view will now 

 give in. Your facts seem, to me at least, very convincing. I 

 never could understand how those great lakes of yours could 

 have been ground out by ice. The physical conditions of the 

 ground seem to me very unfavorable." Prof. G. K. Gilbert, 

 on June 15, 1881, wrote: " My first geological field work was 

 in the drift of the Erie basin, and the problem of the origin of the 

 basins of the great lakes has always had great attraction for me. 

 Had I been able to understand its solution, my working hypothe- 

 sis would have been that which you have demonstrated so 

 thoroughly. . . . The matter has certainly never received a 

 demonstration until your paper appeared. . . ." 



At this time the writer was struggling to find the outlet of 

 the basins, and looked in every possible direction for buried 

 channels without avail. While the St. Lawrence valley, beyond 

 the outlet of lake Ontario, was evidently only a continuation 

 of the drowned valley occupied by the lake, and while the lower 

 St. Lawrence indicated an elevation of the continental region to 

 more than 1 ,200 feet (when the canon of the Saguenay was 

 being excavated) , the evidence of the local oscillation of the 

 earth's crust was not yet forthcoming. The deep canon of the 

 Dundas valley, and the observations of Prof. Gilbert that the 

 Irondequoit bay was drowned to a depth of 70 feet, was taken 

 as evidence of terrestrial oscillation, but later the writer found 

 that the St. Lawrence, after leaving Ontario, was in part flowing 

 over a valley buried or drowned to a depth of 240 feet; accord- 

 ingly the Dundas and Irondequoit valleys were no evidence of 

 local oscillation, which had to be found elsewhere. 



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