whole herd is brought in, they then climb to the top of the fence,. and with the hunters who have followed closely in the rear of the buffalo, spear or shoot with bows and arrows or firearms at the bewildered animals rapidly becoming mad with rage and terror, within the narrow limits of the pound. It is then that a dreadful scene of confusion and slaughter begins, the oldest and strongest animals crush and toss the weaker; the shouts and screams of the excited Indians rise above the roaring of the bulls, the bellowing of the cows and the piteous moaning of the calves. The dying struggles of so many strong, full grown animals crowded together, furnish a revolting and terrible picture, but with occasional displays of wonderful brute strength and rage; while man, in his savage, untutored and heathen state, shows both in deed and expression how little he is superior to the noble beasts he so wantonly and cruelly destroys."

After witnessing this highly characteristic illustration of Indian habits, Professor Hind held a formal interveiw with the Cree Chief, the description of which furnishes a definite expression of the jealousy with which the encroachments of the white men are regarded by the wild hunter tribes. After describing the dress of the Cree Indians, which was of the scantiest description; and the painting, as well as the scars and gashes-record of mourning for departed friends,-with which their bodies were marked, the author thus proceeds: "I enquired the age of an extremely old fellow who asked me for medicine to cure a pain in his chest; he replied he was a strong man when the two Companies (the Hudson's Bay and the North West) were trading with his tribe very many summers ago. He remembers the time when his people were as numerous as the Buffalo are now, and the buffalo thick as trees in the forest. The half-breeds thought he was more than 100 years old. Shortstick accepted the presents of tea, tobacco, bullets, powder and blankets I made him, with marked satisfaction, and expressed a wish to learn the object of our visit. We held a 'talk' in my tent, during which the chief expressed himself freely on various subjects, and listened with the utmost attention to the speeches of the Indians he had summoned to attend the Council.

"All speakers objected strongly to the half-breeds' hunting buffalo during the winter in the Plain Cree country. They had no objection to trade with them or with white people, but they insisted that all strangers should purchase dried meat or pemican, and not hunt for themselves.

"They urged strong objections against the Hudson's Bay Company encroaching upon the prairies, and driving away the buffalo. They would be glad to see them establish as many posts as they chose on the edge of the prairie country, but they did not like to see the plains. invaded. During the existence of the two companies, all went well with the Indians; they obtained excellent pay, and could sell all their meat and pemican. Since the union of the companies they had not fared half so well, had received bad pay for their provisions, and were growing poorer, and weaker, and more miserable year by year. The buffalo were fast disappearing before the encroachments of the white men, and although they acknowledge the value of firearms they thought they were better off in old times, when they had only bows and spears, and wild animals were numerous. I asked Shortstick to name the articles he would like to have if I came into his country again. He asked for tea, a horse of English breed, a cart, a gun, a supply of powder and ball, knives, tobacco, a medal with a chain, a flag, a suit of fine clothes, and rum. The talk lasted between six and seven hours, the greater portion of time being taken up in interpreting sentence by sentence, the speeches of each man in turn. They generally commenced with the creation, giving a short history of that event in most general terms, and after a few flourishes about equality of origin, descended suddenly to buffalo, half-breeds, the Hudson Bay Company, tobacco and rum."

These extracts sufficiently illustrate the varied characteristics of the Report, which extends to upwards of 200 large double-columned. quarto pages, and embraces an Itinerary, with topographical information rendered in the concisest form; Reports of Progress, by different members of the exploring party; Meteorological and Geological details; and a narrative embodying descriptions of scenery, native habits, and such incidents of travel as are at once attractive to the general reader, and of value to those who are desirous of ascertaining the fitness of the region for a scene of emigration, and a future Province of British North America.

Report of the Geological Survey of the State of Iowa. By James Hall, State Géologist, and J. D. Whitney. Iowa: 1858.

The first part of this Report-dated 1858, and embracing the general geology and the paleontology of the State, by Professor Hall, with its physical geography, chemistry. and economic geology

by J. D. Whitney, and sundry geological details by A. H. Worthen -has been issued within the last few months by the Legislature of Iowa. The paleontological portion of the Report is bound up separately. It contains some twenty-nine or thirty steel-plate engravings of very superior execution, exhibiting about a thousand figures of the more characteristic or remarkable fossils collected during the prosecution of the Survey. Mere sketches of scenery, on the other hand, however pleasing in themselves, have been very properly dispensed with in this Report. Illustrations of that kind add enormously to the costs of publication, without offering, as a general rule, any compensating advantages.

The oldest recognised rock in the State of Iowa appears to be the Potsdam Sandstone, This, blended intimately with the Calciferous Sand Rock, is sparingly developed along the line of the Mississippi, in the extreme North-East corner of the State. The other subdivisions of the Silurian Series, and those of succeeding formations up to the coal measures, follow in more or less regular gradation, with their lines of strike running in a general N.W. and S E. direction, or, as stated by Professor Hall, at right angles to the Cincinnati axis and the lines of disturbance along the Appalachian Chain. Owing to this direction of the strata, they are cut successively by the Mississippi River, and show from north-east to south-west the following sequence:The Potsdam Sandstone and Calciferous Sand Rock; the St. Peters Sandstone; the Trenton beds; the Galena limestone (locked upon as an upper portion of the Trenton Group ;) the Hudson River Shales, showing only a narrow outcrop-band; the Leclaire Limestone (see below); the Onondaga Salt-Group, the equivalents of the Upper Helderberg Limestone, Hamilton, and Chemung groups; the Carboniferous Limestone; and the Coal Measures. Although these follow one another regularly, here and there an underlying division is exposed by denudation or rivercutting in some of the tributary vallies of the Mississippi. Thus, amongst other examples, the Trenton Limestone re-appears within the Galena Limestone area along the line of Turkey River; and the Carboniferous Limestone, within the area of the Coal Measures, along the valley of the River Des Moines. Professor Hall remarks, that, in tracing westward such of these geological formations as are known in New York and Pennsylvania, they are found to thin out gradually, becoming indeed, in some in

stances, so attenuated as to be scarcely recognizable, more especially in a district deeply covered, like that of the greater part of Iowa, with Drift and modern deposits. It is to this attenuation of the strata, as well shewn by Professor Hall, that the comparatively subdued aspect of this western country is owing. The united strata are not sufficiently thick to admit of the production of any strongly. marked features, by either denudation or ordinary disturbing forces. Where anticlinals exist, they occupy low levels; and the only real elevations of the district have been produced by denuding agencies on undisturbed or nearly horizontal strata, where these, under special conditions (as in the case of the Niagara Limestone) have presented a more than ordinary thickness to the denuding force. On comparing these results with the phenomena exhibited in the district of the Catskill Mountains and the Appalachians, where the diminished strata of the West occur in accumulations of vast thickness, our author appears inclined to refer the general production of mountain chains, more to the action of denudation, than to that of elevating or disturbing forces. But, in this, his views are surely pushed too far. That denudation has produced mountain masses amongst undisturbed strata, as in the Catskill district, in the old red sandstone country of the Western Highlands of Scotland, and elsewhere, all the world must admit; and equally that anticlinals often occupy comparatively low levels, as the beds of rivers, &c. but when we extend our survey to the great mountain systems of the Earth-the Andes and their prolongations, which brim the eastern contour of the Pacific, the towering Himalayas, the Alps, and other chains, it becomes manifest that elevation has been there produced by disturbing agencies of no ordinary intensity. The bare occurrence of highly inclined and vertical (and sometimes even of reversed) strata, as seen in all these mountainous districts, the presence of stupendous volcanoes in many of them, with other well-known phenomena, point incontestibly to this fact. Denudation may have been concerned, and largely, in the excavation of valleys amongst these, in the production of lines of escarpment, and so forth; but denudation has there played the part of a mere secondary agent. The great views of Elie de Beaumont, however exaggerated and extended beyond their legitimate limits by some geologists, are still in their main features undoubtedly worthy of our reception; and these views are based essentially on the formation of mountain chains by elevating forces.

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Amongst the more interesting facts discovered by Professor Halls' exploration of Iowa, may be cited, first of all, the occurrence of the Hudson River Group in that State and in Illinois; represented by more or less bituminous shaly layers, having an entire thickness of no more than sixty or seventy feet, and thus affording a remarkable exemplification of the law of decrease of sedimentary matter in the westward extension of the paleozoic beds. These Hudson River shales are the equivalents of the "Blue Limestone" of Cincinnati (formerly thought to be Trenton), and the "Blue Shale" of Wisconsin. They appear to be principally exposed around Dubuque, or in a narrow band from the vicinity of Bellevue to somewhere about the head waters of the western branches of Turkey River; growing gradually thinner and thinner, until they finally die out. Another fact of no little geological interest, brought out by this survey, is the discovery of a magnesian limestone formation lying above the Niagara Limestone, and not previously recognised in the Mississippi valley. Professor Hall has named this the Leclaire Limestone, from its development around that locality. It occupies, apparently, a considerable area, having within its limits the main portion of the Wapsipinecon river; and it forms more especially by its undulations the so-called "Upper Rapids" of the Mississippi. Professor Hall shows that these Leclaire beds occupy the same geological horizon as the Galt limestone of Canada West, and he is inclined to look upon the two as geologically identical. If this, on further examination, prove to be the case, it will furnish an additional argument for the separation of the Galt beds from the Onondaga salt group with which at present they are conventionally placed.

In his very interesting sketch of the physical geography of Iowa, Mr. Whitney enters on a somewhat extended description of the causes to which the absence of arboreal vegetation on the prairie lands may be considered due. He attributes the principal cause of this, and apparently on conclusive grounds, to the peculiar and highly comminuted condition of the surface soil. "Taking into consideration all the circumstances under which the peculiar vegetation of the prairie occurs, we are disposed to consider (he remarks,) the nature of the soil as the prime cause of the absence of forests and the predominance of the grasses over this widely extended region. And although chemical composition may not be without influence in bringing about this result, which is a question worthy of careful