which enter into the formation of the main land at Percé, the former would seem especially to be a continuation of the range of cliffs on the south-west side of Mal Bay. The Split Rock is an almost inaccessible mass of this strata, and stands up like a wall, in continuation of the limestone-cliffs of Barry Cape (Point Percé). It is five hundred yards long, one hundred broad, and is remarkable for the presence at its western half of two large holes or arches, through one of which a sloop at full sail can pass at high water. There is a lateral arch at the north east side, scarcely perceptible from the water.

The perforations in this rock have been formed by the action of the waves of the sea, the same cause which has in the progress of time effected the disjunction of these outliers from one another and the main land. From the present position of the islet, which lies almost north and south, I am disposed to consider its northern aspect as the oldest, the two arched openings at that side forming what were once the entrance to deep caverns running into the rock southwards, which in the course probably of ages has been washed away by aqueous denudation. This view is strengthened by an examination of the intervening shores as they exist at present. The coast line of Ile Percé runs along to Bonaventure Island, with an imaginary position of the land at one time between the south-west part of the latter island and the shore at the Bay of Percé, at the point where the cliffs commence at its southern third. This gives the southern coast a semicircular course, with a low shelving beach corresponding to that which now exists at Percé Bay on the one side, and the western coast of Bonaventure on the other; whilst the northern coast is rocky and precipitous, probpierced with many caverns, and gradually diminishing in height to the southward.

BOUCHETTE'S CAVERN, KILDARE.

This cavern was visited and first described by Colonel Bouchette (Surveyor-General of Canada) in the report of his official tour though the new settlements of the lower province in 1824. It is situated in the township of Kildare, about thirty-five miles due north of the city of Montreal, but the precise locality I have been unable to determine, although from the description it may be close to the village of the same name. The southern part of the township is traversed by a broad band of the Potsdam sandstone, in continuation of the same rock running in a north-east direction

from the south-western part of the township of Rawdon. That part of Kildare north of this band is composed of gneiss of the Laurentian system most probably interstratified with some bands of crystalline limestone, in which the cavern is developed.

It was about the year 1822 that two young Canadian peasants, whilst prosecuting their sport of hunting the wild cat, pursued two of their game, until entering an obscure hole a little above the bank of the river, they lost sight of them. The more enterprising of the two attempted to enter the aperture in the rock, at that time barely sufficient to admit of his crawling into it, but without success. Providing themselves with lights, a second attempt was more successful, "for not only did they secure their prey (of which they have preserved the skin to this day), but they discovered," says Colonel Bouchette, "another of the many phenomena of nature, a description of which cannot be uninteresting." The following account is given in the Colonel's words :

"I descended into the cavern by means of a trap-door, which has recently been placed at one of its angles for the facility and convenience of strangers desirous of visiting this singular spot, having as my guides two of the inhabitants of the neighbouring house, bearing lighted tapers. The height of the cave where we entered is five feet, from which angle branch off two caves, the lesser whereof is of the following dimensions

It bears about a south-east course from the entrance.

The other has in length....

Width from....

Height gradually increasing..

70 feet.

"The increase in the loftiness of the cave originates from the declivity of the ground part, which, at the north-eastern extremity, is at least twenty-three feet from the surface. It forms nearly a right angle with the first, at its south-western end, and an angle scarcely obtuse at the other with another cave, whose

Length is......

Average width..

Height....

80 feet

6

5 ""

At the south-eastern extreme of this cave branches off another of inferior size and consequence, bearing about a due north course,

as may ed:

be deduced from the angle it makes with the last describ

"At the outward angle formed by this cave with the preceding one, is to be seen a nearly circular aperture of about a foot and a half in diameter, which leads to a cavern yet unexplored, the extent whereof is not known with any certainty; but conjecture and supposition will have it to extend two arpents-an astonishing distance as a natural subterraneous passage. Summing the lengths of the several caves above-mentioned together, we have a total distance of a hundred and ninety-five feet of subterraneity in the solid rock offering a beautiful rock of crystallized sulphurate of lime, carved as it were by the hand of art, and exhibiting at once the sublimity of nature, and the mastery of the allpowerful Architect of the universe."

From the foregoing description there would seem to be five different caverns or galleries, and probably many more, if the fifth has been since explored. Three of them branch off from the entrance in different directions, whilst the remaining two do so at the termination of the central gallery. The roof throughout is covered with stalactites, but as no mention is made of stalagmite, nor of the presence of bones, we are left to conclude that they were absent, although the chances were much in favor of finding the latter, in consequence of there being a free and unobstructed entrance into the cavern.

ARTICLE XIII.—Flint drift and Human Remains. Extacted from the Duke of Argyll's opening address as President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

(From the Edinburgh New Phil. Journal.)

"The attention, not of geologists only, but of men of science in several departments, has, during this and the preceding year, been fully awakened to the importance of a discovery which is really of much older date-viz., that flint implements, the work of man, are found in beds of drift gravel associated with the bones of the last generation of the great extinct mammalia. The full significance of this fact is only now being fully recognized, and many of the conclusions which it may tend to establish are subject to much doubt,

and will probably form the subject of increasing controversy. But it is only necessary to have a clear idea of the facts as they have been now ascertained, to see that one conclusion at least is placed beyond all question-viz., that great physical changes on the surface of the earth, and these, in part at least, effected by the agency of water, have taken place since the creation of man.

Whether this conclusion carries the creation of man farther back than had commonly been supposed, or whether it merely brings nearer to us than we had before conceived the last great changes which have produced the existing surface, is the main question on which debate arises. As geology gives no certain data for computing positive, but only relative time, this question is necessarily involved in much obscurity. But there are certain limits within which, after all, the controversy is confined. It is well to observe that, according to the principle on which geological times and epochs are classified, the human epoch remains, after these discoveries, very much where it stood before. It is true that many of the large animals, with which the traces of men seem to be connected, are now extinct; but a very much larger number are still living. The Molluscan Fauna, which plays so important a part in ages of geologic time, is absolutely the same. The general aspect of animal life is the present aspect, with the exception that a certain number of species of the larger Herbivora and Carnivora have become extinct. But such extinctions, local in many instances, and total in some, have taken place in historic times, and are in visible process of accomplishment even now. Such extinctions do not constitute a new Fauna, nor, according to the received principle of classifying past times, do they mark a new geological age. The era of man, therefore, remains, geologically speaking, in the same relative place in which it stood before the very last and latest of the world.

But the fact that human implements are found under great beds of gravel and of earth formed by water, whether of rivers or of the sea, at an elevation which in either case would imply changes of level, such as, if general, would be enough to revolutionize the whole aspect of our now habitable surface, is a fact which casts new and important light on the (geologically speaking) very recent date at which those changes have taken place.

Whether the men who formed the implements were or were not contemporary with the living quadrupeds whose bones are associated with these implements, seems to me a subordinate ques

tion. The mere fact of such association may not absolutely prove the point, because it is conceivable that the bones may have been merely re-aggregated from an older fossiliferous deposit. But I suspect that the reluctance to admit the contemporaneity of man with those animals results from the reluctance to admit man's priority to such physical changes as are supposed to separate us from a Fauna typified by the Mammoth and the Elk. If, therefore, the fact of such priority be proved from the stratigraphical position of the flint relics, wholly independent of any argument derived from organic remains, the importance of the question respecting the human age of the great mammals will be much diminished. It may be well, therefore, to keep our attention firmly fixed on what is really the important question-the nature and position of the strata in which, and under which, the flint implements have been interred. Going no farther for light upon this question than the particular beds at Amiens and Abbeville in France, where the implements have been found in greatest abundance, it is enough to record the fact. The flints are embedded in a stratum of gravel, which rests directly on an eroded surface of the chalk, and contains along with the hatchets, the bones of the great extinct mammalia. This is again surrounded by a bed of sand from seven to ten feet thick, in which only a few rare bones and implements have been found. This is again capped by a second bed of gravel from two to five feet thick; and lastly, the top of all, is a bed of brick earth, in which, as if to afford the very poetry of illustration, are to be seen the tombs of RomanGaul. Such is the position of the beds with reference to each other. But what is their position with reference, not to each other, but to the surrounding country? The gravel-bed extends to points upwards of a hundred feet above the level of the river Somme, which occupies the bottom of the existing valley. It is described by Professor Rogers, a most competent and accurate observer, as extending to the summits of the plateaux which determine the existing drainage. Whether, therefore, the water which formed these beds were marine or fluviatile, in either case such changes of level are implied as would be sufficient, if general, to alter widely the existing distribution of land and sea.

on

Here, then, the question arises, Were those changes local-confined perhaps to the district of Western France? Connected with this question, another immediately occurs: Is not this bed of gravel identical in character and compositson with similar deposits