Editorial Comment. 245 
entertained, and the visit was highly appreciated, but the ground 
is very familiar to nearly all and any description would be super- 
fluous for geologists. 
The other Saturday excursions were intended chiefly for botan- 
ists and pleasure seekers. We need not say that they were well 
attended and enjoyed. 
A special part}^, led by Prof. H. T. Fuller, afterwards made an 
excursion to the new shaft drilled for salt at Livonia. In spite 
of the extraordinarily low price at which salt is now sold there is 
apparently a profit in its manufacture as the works are being en- 
larged and extended in every direction. 
Irondequoit bay and its preglacial valley and the beaches of 
lake Ontario were visited and investigated by special parties who 
chiefly made their own arrangements. Nothing but a visit can 
give adequate ideas of this monument of the Ice- Age standing in 
bold relief on the Very edge of the Ontarian basin, and to glacial- 
ists few excursions could be more useful or interesting. But a 
lengthy description would be of little use and might even become 
tedious. The general features are familiar. The "ridge road" 
occupies the old sand beach under which lies a lower one of 
coarse shingle chiefl}' composed of Medina sandstone mingled 
however with northern drift. Below the last and entirely con- 
cealed by glacial deposits is the ancient buried cliff, of hight un- 
known, which once formed the southern bluff of the Ontarian 
vallej' before the lake existed. Heavy deposits of silt and of 
morainic matter fill the inlets up to the level of the ancient 
outflow point where the waters of the lake escaped when the 
present channel of the St. Lawrence was blocked. These facts 
and the lessons which they can teach of the varying hight of the 
water and possibly also of the land lent great interest to the va- 
rious lake excursions and were to geologists exceedingl}' instruc- 
tive. All, whether geologists or not, fully appreciated the kind- 
ness of their Rochester entertainers, and the aid kindly given 
them by several of the railway companies whose lines run to 
Rochester. 
Ward's Natural Science Estaulisii.ment. 
Not the least among the attractions of Rochester to the geolo- 
gists belonging to the Association was the establishment of Prof. 
Henry A. Ward. From a small beginning, thirty years ago, this 
museum factory has grown to immense size. The earliest collec- 
