this interesting subject are wanting; and these are not easily made on this iron-hound and earthquake-shaken coast, where there has been so little low and level land upon which Champlain clays could be deposited.
That this portion of the continent—like the Eastern side—has been higher than now, we learn from the deeply-excavated channels of the Golden Gate, the straits of Carquines, the mouth of the Columbia, the Canal De Haro, etc. But this erosion was produced in part if not altogether in Tertiary times. At Shoalwater Bay and about Steilacoom, there are raised beaches, apparently of ancient date, but farther south the changes of level have been so frequent and local that nothing like system has been educed from a comparison of the old shore-lines.
Taken as a whole, the glacial inscriptions of the West coast, as studied by King and Le Conte in California, and myself in Oregon, prove an Ice period as distinctly as do the glacial marks of the Atlantic coast and the Mississippi Valley; but the peculiar topography of the Western country has made the record a somewhat different one.
From the foregoing facts it seems to me that we are justified in concluding:
1. That however simple and plausible the Lyellian hypothesis may be, or however ingenious the extension or application of it suggested by Dana, it is not sustained by any proof, and the testimony of the rocks seems to be decidedly against it.
2. Though much may yet be learned from a more extended and careful study of the glacial phenomena of all parts of both hemispheres, the facts already gathered seem to be incompatible with any theory yet advanced which makes the Ice period simply a series of telluric phenomena, and so far strengthens the arguments of those who look to extraneous and cosmical causes for the origin of these phenomena.
| A FITTING RECOGNITION OF AMERICAN SCIENCE. |
PRESENTATION OF THE RUMFORD MEDAL BY THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE TO DR. DRAPER—FROM THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY.
AT the six hundred and eighty-ninth meeting of this body, held March 8, 1876, the chairman of the Rumford Committee introduced the special business of the evening, and handed to the President, Hon. Charles Francis Adams, the Rumford medals (in gold and silver), on each of which had been engraved the following inscription: "Awarded by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to John W. Draper, for his researches in radiant energy, May 25, 1875." In presenting the medals the President said:
