of time, which is wanting in the other localities, namely, the test afforded by the recession of the falls, an operation still in progress, by which the deep ravine of the Niagara, seven miles long, between Queenstown and Goat Island, has been hollowed out. This ravine is not only post-glacial, but also posterior in date to the fluviatile or mastodon-bearing beds. The individual therefore found fossil near Goat Island flourished before the gradual excavation of the deep and long chasm, and we must reckon its antiquity, not by thousands, but by tens of thousands of years, if I have correctly estimated the minimum of time which was required for the erosion of that great ravine.[1]
The stories widely circulated of bones of the mastodon having been observed with their surfaces pierced as if by arrow-heads, or bearing the marks of wounds inflicted by some stone implement, must in future be more carefully inquired into, for we can scarcely doubt that the mastodon in North America lived down to a period when the mammoth coexisted with man in Europe. But I need say no more on this subject, having already (p. 200) explained my views in regard to the evidence of the antiquity of man in North America, when treating of the human bone discovered at Natchez, on the Mississippi.
In Canada and the United States, we experience the same difficulty as in Europe, when we attempt to distinguish between glacial formations of submarine and those of supramarine origin. In the New World, as in Scotland and England, marine shells of this era have rarely been traced higher than five hundred feet above the sea, and seven hundred feet seems to be the maximum to which at present they are known to ascend. In the same countries, erratic blocks have travelled from N. to S., following the same direction as
- ↑ Principles of Geology, 9th ed. p. 2; and Travels in North America, vol. i. p. 32, 1845.
