Personal and Scientific News. 143 
eluding a femur, all in a very perfect state of preservation, were 
exhibited before the Society ; and professor Orton stated that 
further exploration of the locality, when permitted b}- return of 
mild weather, will probably recover additional parts of the skele- 
ton. It was found only a slight depth beneath the surface, in a 
postglacial marl bed. The surprisingly late extinction of this and 
other gigantic Pleistocene mammals, after the culmination of the 
Glacial period, was noticed as very difficult to be explained. 
The next paper was by Mr. Warren Upham, on the ' ' Glacial 
Lakes of Canada," formed during the recession of the ice-sheets 
which were temporary barriers across hydrographic basins now 
drained toward the north. Lake Agassiz, in Minnesota, North 
Dakota and Manitoba, stretching north over the present sites of 
lakes Winnipeg and Manitoba, was described as the most exten- 
sive of these lakes. At the same time the great lakes now out- 
flowing by the St. Lawrence were held at higher levels than now, 
as shown by their old shore lines ; and during later stages of the 
glacial recession great glacial lakes were formed in the southern 
part of the basin of James and Hudson bays, outflowing south- 
ward over the continental water-shed at its lowest passes near 
Kenogami and Missinaibi lakes to lake Superior, and by lake 
Abittibi to the Ottawa. From the descriptions of the drift de- 
posits along the eastern base of the Roclcy mountains and on the 
Peace river, given principally by Dr. G. M. Dawson, of the Cana- 
dian Geological Survey, Mr. Upham claimed that the eastern or 
Laurentide ice sheet and the western or Cordilleran ice-sheet be- 
came confluent during the culmination of the second Glacial 
epoch, the western ice probably wholly enveloping the Rocky 
mountains near the Peace river, where they rise only 3, 500 feet 
above the adjoining country and about 6,000 feet above the sea. 
The southern border of the confluent ice at that time appears to 
have reached to Wood mountain, the Cypress hills, and the sources 
of Milk river, in southern Assiniboia and Alberta ; and the ice- 
sheet of British Columbia, as determined by Dr. Dawson, covered 
isolated mountains 5,000 to 7,640 feet above the sea. 
In discussion of this paper, Dr. Dawson pointed out the diffi- 
culty of believing that the great plain countiy between Manitoba 
and the Rocky mountains was ever covered by an ice-sheet, in- 
stead of which he attributes the deposition of the drift there to 
floating ice during a marine or lacustrine submergence. 
Lack of time prevented the reading of several other papers on 
Pleistocene geolog}', probably not less important, whose authors 
were absent ; but, with the foregoing, these will in due time ap- 
pear in printed form. 
Dr. W. Clark, of Berea, ()., has been in the field again and 
has met with his accustomed success in discovering fossil fish. 
His previous work in this direction will be fresh in the mind of 
