Year: 1873

luc CduS vi NlhSai"


How they are looked upon by an English


Professor.


On first seeing the Falls of Niagara,
which he approached fromthe American
side, Prof. Tyndall was not disappoint-
ed, but yet not very much exalted. His
mode was not the very best perhaps,
but in any case with such sights time is
q great element. The mind and eye
must grow to the occasion. Afterward
he sat perched in the top of the tower
on Goat Island for hours at time, and
at all hours of the day and night,
gazing npon the tremendous fall. He
observed that the waters had a
rhythmic fall, wave after wave splash
ing down with a certain periodicity,
the effect of which was rather musical
than noisy. The great roar of Niagara
he described as existing chiefly in the
imagination of the travellers; owing to
the fiatness of the surrounding table
land, there is little sounding board for
the fall, and its roar is slight compared
with that of smaller falls, such as that
at Devils Bridge in Switzerland. AS
the water falls rhythmically, SO the
spray rises in successive gauzy wells,
giving periodicity to the outhashings
of the marvellous rainbow. And when
with these characteristics the rich and
various emerald hues of the fall, thread
ed with streaks of silver foam are con-
sidered, "it may be perceived that
beauty is not absent, though majesty is
its chief attribute.


He found the gorge below the suspen-
sion bridge and the whirlpool to be al
most as wonderful as the fall, and on
the day when he was guided to it by
the photographer-but for whom he
might have missed 1.-THE surface SEEM
ed covered with broken rainbows. Of
the vast wave .crests at this point, as
we'll as other views, the professor show
ed number of admirable Photographic
views (taken instantaneously) with his
magic lantern, and he had besides two
paintings and two maps, which give a
full view of the whole country from
Lake Erie to Ontario.


1 have omitted reporting from my
notes the purely scientific passages of
the Professors lecture. The view he
took was substantially that of Sir
Charles Lyell. He had small cataract
made in front of the lecture desk,
which I found rather comical with
memories of Niagara in my mind, by
which he illustrated the wearing away
of the.soft shale beneath the upper
rock, and the consequent breaking
down of this strong crust. He tracked
the fall cutting its mighty furrow all
the way. step by step, from tho e,cnrp-
ment through the table land at Lewis
ton up to its present position; said that
it was probable that many falls such as
the American Fall had been found in
that progress, only to be drained off by
the great central current, and predicted
that in 5000 years the Horseshoe Fall
must be above Goat Island, and all be-
ween that island and the American
shore be dry land.


A very interesting episode of the lee
ture, to his English hearers, was some
experiments with the sand blast, with
which he illustrated the phenomena of
erosion. Nothing in America of a
scientific kind seems to have more In
terested Prof. Tyndall than the Boston
Sand Blast Works, through which he
was led by Josiah Quincy. Afterward
he met in Philadelphia Gen. Tiedmann,
the inventor of it, who gave him many
specimens of the curious effects on
glass and other materials produced by
the the blast. Of course it would not
have been Tyndall if he had not already
in the institution a small sand blast.
In working it lately he got his nose and
mouth SO full of sand that he was an
noyed by it for two days; so, previous
to his experiments he filed his nostrils
with cotton, and asked the audience to
excuse any peculiarly in his voice, and
proceeded to cover pieces of glass with
varieties of lace and other patterns,
greatly to their delight. He then show
ed how this carving of the world by
sand was ever going on, and exhibited
some stones which were almost as artis-
tically carved as Indian arrows, but
which had been touched only by
abrading sand. He said that Professor
Huxley was of opinion that the neck of
the Sphinx had been carved out by the
wind-driven sands of the surrounding
desert. With these preliminaries DIR.
Tyndall showed what grand phenomena
of erosion had gone on at Niagara, and
so ended the scientific part of his lee
ture.