above the strata of cooled lava. The banks of the Des Chutes River and Columbia afford splendid sections of these lake deposits, where the history I have so hastily sketched may be read as from an open book.

But, it will be said that there are portions of the great central plateau which have not been drained in the manner I have described. For here are basins which have no outlets, and which still hold sheets of water of greater or less area, such as those of Pyramid Lake, Salt Lake, etc. The history of these basins is very different from that of those already mentioned, but not less interesting nor easily read. By the complete drainage of the northern and southern thirds of the plateau through the channels of the Columbia and Colorado, the water surface of this great area was reduced to the tenth or one-hundredth part of the space it previously occupied. Hence, the moisture suspended in the atmosphere was diminished in like degree, and the dry hot air, sweeping over the plains, licked up the water from the undrained lakes until they were reduced to their present dimensions. Now, as formerly, they receive the constant flow of the streams that drain into them from the mountains on the east and west, but the evaporation is so rapid that their dimensions are not only not increased thereby, but are steadily diminishing from year to year. Around many of these lakes, as Salt Lake for example, just as around the margins of the old drained lakes, we can trace former shore lines and measure the depression of the water level. Many of these lakes of the Great Basin have been completely dried up by evaporation, and now their places are marked by alkaline plains or "salt flats." Others exist as lakes only during a portion of the year, and in the dry season are represented by sheets of glittering salt. Even those that remain as lakes are necessarily salt, as they are but great evaporating pans, where the drainage from the mountains, which always contains a portion of saline matter, is concentrated by the sun and wind until it becomes a saturated solution, and deposits its surplus salt upon the bottom. * * The pictures which geology holds up to our view, of North America during the Tertiary ages, are, in all respects but one, more attractive and interesting than could be drawn from its present aspects. Then a warin and genial climate prevailed from the Gulf to the Arctic Sea; the Canadian highlands were higher, but the Rocky Mountains lower and less broad. Most of the continent cxhibited an undulating surface; rounded hills and broad

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valleys covered with forests grander than any of the present day, or wide expanses of rich savannah over which roamed countless herds of animals, many of gigantic size, of which our present meagre fauna retains but a few dwarfed representatives. Noble rivers flowed through plains and valleys, and sea-like lakes broader and more numerous than those the continent now bears diversified the scenery. Through unnumbered ages the seasons ran their ceaseless course, the sun rose and set, moons waxed and waned over this fair land, but no human eye was there to mark its beauty, or human intellect to control and use its exuberant fertility. Flowers opened their many colored petals on meadow and hill-side, and filled the air with their fragrance, but only for the delectation of the wandering bee. Fruits ripened in the sun, but there was no hand there to pluck, nor any speaking tongue to taste. Birds sang in the trees, but for no ears but their own. The surface of lake or river was whitened by no sail, nor furrowed by any prow but the breast of the water-fowl; and the far reaching shores echoed no sound but the dash of the waves, and the lowing of the herds that slaked their thirst in the crystal waters.

Life and beauty were everywhere; and man, the great destroyer, had not yet come, but not all was peace and harmony in this Arcadia. The forces of nature are always at war, and redundant life compels abundant death. The innumerable species of animals and plants had each its hereditary enemy, and the struggle of life was so sharp and bitter that in the lapse of ages many genera and species were blotted out forever.

The herds of herbivores-which included nearly all the genera now living on the earth's surface, with many strange forms long since extinct-formed the prey of carnivores commensurate to these in power and numbers. The coo of the dove and the whistle of the quail were answered by the scream of the eagle; and the lowing of herds and the bleating of flocks come to the ear of the imagination, mingled with the roar of the lion, the howl of the wolf, and the despairing cry of the victim. Yielding to the slow-acting but irresistible forces of nature, each in succession of these various animal forms has disappeared till all have passed away or been changed to their modern representatives, while the country they inhabited, by the upheaval of its mountains, the deepening of its valleys, the filling and draining of its great lakes, has become what it is.

OBITUARY NOTICE.

MR. EDWARD HARTLEY, who died in Pictou, Nova Scotia, on the 10th November last, was the eldest son of Mr. William M. B. Hartley, of New York, and grandson of Mr. Philos Blake, of New Haven, U.S. He was born in Montreal on the 8th of November, 1847, and was consequently little over twenty-three years of age. Educated in the schools of Messrs. French & Russell, of New Haven, he early showed a great aptitude for the study of the natural and physical sciences, and for mechanics, tastes which he inherited from both of his parents. At the age of fifteen he became a student in the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale College, where he completed the course of study with much credit to himself. Though still very young, he was, on leaving the school, at once charged with the examination and surveying of mineral lands in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and subsequently with the erection of machinery for washing gold, in North Carolina. His abilities attracted the attention of the officers of the geological survey of Canada, under Sir William Logan, and in July, 1868, he joined the survey as a geological assistant; the following year he was appointed Mining Engineer to the geological survey. His duties from this time confined him to the Coal Fields of Nova Scotia, where, in 1868, he worked conjointly with Sir William Logan and in 1869, alone, completing a careful and detailed survey of the Pictou Coal basin, of which an elaborate report by Sir William and another by himself, was printed and privately distributed before his death. It will be published with a map in the forthcoming volume of the geological survey.

The Appendix to this report contains a large number of coal analyses made by Mr. Hartley in the laboratory of the survey, and also numerous experiments on the heating power of the various steam coals as compared with each other and with wood. These practical trials were made in trips of several hour each on steamers and locomotives, and occupied several weeks. They were conducted in such a manner as to command the full confidence both of the railway officials and the coal owners, and cannot fail to be of great public value.

During 1870, Mr. Hartley was engaged with an assistant, in the survey of the Cumberland coal-basin in Nova Scotia, and of the Cape Breton collieries, and had nearly completed his labours

for the season, when he died of an inflammation of the bowels, of only six days duration, brought on, it is to be feared, by labour beyond his physical strength.

Mr. Hartley had rare qualities, and remarkable acquirements. His acquaintance with chemistry and mineralogy, as well as with geology, mining and mechanics, was singularly acurate and extended for one of his years, but his habits of study and intense application explained his remarkable attainments. Added to this his moral and social qualities had made for him, wherever known, a great number of friends. He was a Fellow of the Geological Societies of London and France; a member of the institute of Engineers of Scotland; of the institute of Mining and Engineering of the North of England, and of various local societies.

T. S. H.

GEOGRAPHICAL SCIENCE.-The question of higher Geographi cal education, mooted a few days since, through a contemporary by a distinguished Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, is of so much importance to the educational world, and of such absorbing interest to myself personally, as to lead me to solicit a brief space in your columns. It is not now for the first time that the necessity of obtaining the recognition of geographical science on the part of the leading educational bodies-i. e., the Universities— has been indicated as the absolutely indispensable condition to its culture in our higher schools and colleges. Reference to your own columns will show that this was pointed out by myself long since The Athenæum, No. 2100), and that I urged the Royal Geographical Society to a course of action which might help to bring about a consummation so eargerly desired by workers who, like myself, have employed years of active exertion in promoting the pursuit of a study which, in regard to its higher aims, is less recognized-even, I will go so far as to say, less understood-in the schools of Britain than in those of any other country of Europe. Educated foreigners regard with astonishment the fact that, amongst a nation which forms the central point of commerce and of colonial enterprise to the modern world-whose merchants have dealings with every land, and whose statesmen require to take cognizance of the climatic and other geographical conditions of dependencies that lie under the most widely-separated meridians. -the culture of Geography, in its higher sense, passes without recognition on the part of those who of necessity give the tone to

actual workers in the education of the youth of Britain, and brings its devotees none of the honours or more substantial rewards which may fall to the lot of students in other walks of science. No endowment gives encouragement to the cultivator of geographical science no university even recognizes his labours. Students in schools and colleges must of necessity concentrate their more advanced efforts upon subjects for which they can obtain the coveted reward, and the only Geography they learn is that which belongs to the most rudimentary stage of education--is not, indeed, Geography at all in its higher acceptance and aim. All this, and more than this, has been pointed out long since; and there belongs to myself at least the consciousness of having laboured during many years to give a better direction to the culture of Geography, so as to realize for it something at least of that comprehensiveness of meaning which German men of science recognize as embodied in the expressive word "Erdkunde." But knowing this, and acting, to the best of my opportunities, on the knowledge, the results indicated by Mr. Galton-in reference to the recent offer of medals, to be competed for amongst certain schools, on the part of the Royal Geographicial Society-in no degree surprise me; nor can I apprehend that they will occasion any suprise on the part either of the heads of schools or of practical workers in the class-room. They are precisely such as might have been anticipated, and such as (I can vouch from personal knowledge) were anticipated by some at least among the soundest and most advanced of educators. However high may be the estimate placed. on proficiency in geographical knowledge-and I, at least, shall not be suspected of undervaluing its claims-it is manifest that the conditions under which its rewards can be sought must (if they are to bear any practical issue) be in harmony with other, and in no degree less important, objects claiming the teacher's attention. In other words, the Geography which, in common wish many fellow-workers, I earnestly wish to see introduced into. the curriculum of our higher-class schools and colleges, must take its proper place in the well-considered and matured scheme of education as a whole. To claim for it an undue and all-absorbing regard-or what, in the working of the class-room, such as the practical education alone can know it, amidst the multiplied claims on the attention of the learner at the present day, may prove to be such is to incur the risk of frustating the entire aim and of doiug injury rather than service to a good cause. WM. HUGHES.

King's College, London, June 15, 1871.