Waterbury evening Democrat., 1889-01-03
PROBABILITIES OF NIAGARA.
Changes That Are Liable to Take Place
 Estimated on the Past.

Changes That Are Liable to Take Place,
 Estimated on the Past.
 If the rate of retrocessdon remains during the next 500 years it has been for the last forty-five years, the inner edge of the Horse shoe Fall will havo passed to the east of Goat Island and as the line of deepest water is near the Canadian shore all the waters of the river will pass over the Horseshoe Fall, obliterating the American Fall entirely and transforming Goat Island into peninsula, or which the smaller islands of today, Bath, Luna, Chapin, etc, will appear as little hill tops.
 The fall will then, perhaps, be higher than today because the present descent of fifty feet over the rapids will be added to the height of the cataract, minus the number of feet needed to give the necessary current to the river below, which at present is fifteen feet to the mile. Considering that even now the Horseshoe Fall no longer recedes south but more east than south, which recession will be more easterly yet in the course of time, it will have to travel about five miles in that direction before the Niagara shale, which now occupies the lower half of the face of the fall, is under water; and the retrocession by means of undermin- ing is stopped. For at present the changes that take place are due to the fact that the upper eighty feet of the face is formed of O hard limestone, while the lower eighty feet is composed of soft, easily crumbling shale, which the spray can wash away with ease to such an extent that the overlying limestones lose their support, break off and tumble down with corresponding change in the ap- pearance of the edge of the falls. Then the changes will be accomplished simply by the eroding power of the water and the falls will remain near the northern end of Grand Island for practically unlimited time. We thus see that after the falls of today have receded, perhaps three quarters of a mile, there will be only one fall; when that one fall has trav- eled east and south four miles moro and reaches Grand Island, 1t will again be divided into an American and Canadian cataract, this time separated by Grand Island, and, like the falls of today, the western branch will carry the largest amount of water, will recede faster and be the lower of the two in height. The hope of finally having the falls at Buffalo must be abandoned, for from that point of Grand Island to the city of Buffalo only rapids can exist on account of the nature of the underlying rock, which is soft
 AS the retrocession of the Falls of Niagara began in what may be called, geologically, the most recent period, the time necessary for 1t to arrive at its present site has had @ very important bearing upon the question of the age of man on the American continent As long as it was considered necessary to claim several hundred thousand years for the age of Niagara alone, the age of the human race had to be computed at perhaps half & million of years; no matter how little such high figures agreed with other discoveries, the rocky gorge of the Niagara always pre- sented an insurmountable obstacle against any reduction of time. But since we have hiSCOVpraH th0t af all fho of tion could have been accomplished in per haps 5000 years, our computation of the age of the human race has settled down to req sonable figures, which give to the beds of sand and gravel in which the oldest human implements have been found an age of per haps 10000 to 60,0O0 years, and anthropolo- gists claim that all the facts SO far collected agree we'll with the latter fgure.-Professor Julius Pohlman