Prehistoric Footprints in a Toronto Tunnel.

Prehistoric Footprints in a Toronto Tunnel.

A correspondent writes that Toronto, Ont., is “pluming itself over a recent find in the excavations for the waterworks tunnel under Toronto bay of a multitude of footsteps, not on the ‘sands of time’ but on the ‘blueish interglacial clay’ of at least 50,000 or 100,000 years ago, 30 ft. under the surface of the water, the depth of the water being 30 ft. or more under the mean level of the adjoining land. This find is held to prove that even at that remote period there existed a more or less nomadic population on what was then dry land, and that the accepted chronology, even that of the higher critics, i? all wrong, and that the oldest inhabitants of Toronto (those of them at least who boast that Indian—more properly, aboriginal—blood flows in their veins) can now point with pride to a lineage (of course, aristocratic) that far outshines the mushroom royalties and dukes of the effete European or the still more ancient Chinese or Hindu peoples. This discovery—one that is destined to upset all chronology—is to the effect that workmen in the waterworks tunnel excavation of the Queen ( ity of Canada not only hit on more than 100 footmarks in the ‘blueish interglacial clay’ (‘interglacial’ is good), some of them those of full grown adults, and men, 4 in. long (there’s nothing like accuracy in details on such a momentous crisis), of children, all undoubtedly those of Indians—because they were nioccasined and all pigeon-toed—as Indians (query, only Indians?) are, with other footprints not so distinct. This, on the authority of City Inspector W. H. Cross, is claimed to show undubitably that this underground and underwater clay formed part of a trail used irregularly (the footsteps being confused, some one on the top of another) on the grade of the new tunnel. Unfortunately, however, the ‘bluish interglacial clay’ was broken up by the excavators, so that scientists on the surface have not been afforded the opportunity of seeing them and must take the whole story on faith, relying on Mr. Cross’s local reputation for being capable of discerning accurately between the toe-marks of monster palaeontological lizards—somewhat similar tracks having before misled sciolists calling themselves geologists into dogmatically pronouncing them to he the footprints of prehistoric men. But. of course, in the latter case, these tracks were not shod, as were those of the original Torontonians, which makes all the difference between a lizard and a troglodyte man of some 100,000 years ago. so liighlv civilised as to moccasin not only himself, but, also, the 4-in. feet of the little toddlers by his side. Anyway, the nioccasined tracks in the ‘blueish interglacial clay,’ 35 ft. below the 35 ft. of surface-water in Toronto bay will prove but a sorry rival to the pleistocene human relics found about the same time as those in Toronto in an excavation at Chapelle-aux-Saints, France. These, however, it is claimed, antedate the Ontario ‘blueish interglacial clay’ find by some 78,000 or 120,000 years (which, of course, may account for the lack of moccasins), and are so very ape-like and so nearly approaching creatures that could go erect or on all-fours, as to suggest the unearthing of Darwin’s missing link. In so far, therefore, Toronto’s alleged prehistoric adults and children of tender years have the advantage over their French brethren.”

W. B. McD.