270 General Notes. [March 
eighty-three feet beneath the present surface of Lake Erie, whilst 
the adjacent ice-scratched bed of the Niagara River, at the Buf- 
falo International Bridge, is not more than forty-five feet beneath 
the lake surface. 
Consequently, it appears that the St. David’s Valley and such 
portions of the channel as those ice-scratched above the Whirl- 
pool which remain, represent only the water-course or water- 
courses of local drainage before the Ice Age. This being the 
case, the ancient river did not recede deeply into the Niagara es- 
carpment, and we are led to the conclusion that the cañon of the 
Niagara River, above the Whirlpool as below, is mostly of modern 
origin throughout, and not to any great extent an ancient drift- 
lled gorge, re-excavated since the Ice Age—% W. Spencer, 
University of Missouri, November, 1886. 
Palæontological Observations on the Taconic Limestones 
of Canaan, Columbia County, N. Y.'—These researches occu- 
pied a little more than two days in June of this year, and were 
made in continuation of those previously reported, with the 
following results : 
I. Thorough search was made in and around the farm of E. 
S. Hall, near Flatbrook, with the hope of finding in place the 
Trenton limestone which occufs here in large loose angular 
masses, filled with Solenopora (Chetetes) compacta and other 
minute corals. A ledge was found which may very likely con- 
tain altered nodules of this coral, but no positive evidence of its 
Presence was obtained. The fossiliferous masses may well have 
come from ledges concealed under the deep drift which covers 
this farm. 
II. An exceedingly interesting locality of richly fossiliferous 
limestone was discovered about two and a half miles to the north 
(of Hall’s farm. It is on the farm of Mr. Joseph Heminway, 
about a mile and a quarter northeasterly from the Canaan Four 
Corners Railway Station; it barely crops out at the surface, at 
the eastern foot of a very conspicuous limestone ledge lying im- 
mediately east of the farm buildings. Much of this rock is a 
mass of organic remains, most of which are finely comminuted 
~ nts of crinoid columns mixed with portions of mollusc 
shells. 
- Though presenting a somewhat different set of the larger — 
organisms, this stratum appears most probably identical with the 
fossiliferous limestone at the Canaan railroad tunnel, described 
in the American Journal of Science for April, 1886. The Hem- ' 
* Abstract of paper presented before the American Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science, at Buffalo, August, 1886. 
