NIAGARA FALLS SHIFTING.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1873, 5 September 1918, Page 1

NIAGARA FALLS SHIFTING.

An American scientist has allowed the Niagara Falls a life of only some 7,000 years, with a possibility of even considerably less. The latest contribution to the Niagara question is a monograph published by the Canadian Geological Survey. It makes two important additions to the known facts. A series of borings has been made to determine the course of the former river channel which is exposed at the Niagara Whirlpool, and the Niagara River below the Falls has been carefully sounded. The soundings have proved the existence of a basin 102 feet deep immediately below the Falls; the river then shallows, until at (he Cantilever Bridge the depth is only eighty-six feet. The basin is due to the filling up of the channel by materia] that has fallen in from the sides of the Gorge after the Falls have passed upstream, a fact proved by work undertaken in connection with the foundations of the bridge. Dr. Spencer, in addition to these important contributions to the facts, has carefully rc-discnsscd the evidence and shown how complicated the problem is, owing to the numerous post-glacial changes in the phy--icai geography of the Niagara area luring the lifetime of Hie Falk. According to his calculations the Falls have receded upstream at a mean rate of 42 feet per annum during the sixty-three years between .1842 and .14)05. The rate of: retreat is not uniform, for (he progress consists in the cutting of a V-shaped groove, which is gradually widening- during :i period where there is no recession of the notch; the edge of the Falls thus becomes slraighter, and thou the formation of the horseshoe curve begins again. By the double process seven and three-quarter acres of the river bed above the Falls have been removed since 1842.