The old river beds that formerly carried the water that is now drained through the St. Lawrence were eroded by the action of running water to a great depth, as is shown by numerous borings along the valley of the Mohawk and down the Hudson. The salt wells at Syracuse, N. Y., have been put down through glacial drifts and the salt water is found in the bed of the old river. Great bodies of salt are found at that low level, constantly dissolved by the water percolating through the sand and gravel of the glacial drift. This salt water is pumped up and evaporated, leaving the salt--forming one of the important industries of that region. All of the rivers from the Ohio eastward tell the same story, which is that at some remote period the land was much higher above the level of the sea than it is to-day. The bottoms of many of these old river beds are lower than sea-level, but as they were made by running water they must have been at one time above that point. There is abundant evidence that the earth sinks in some places and rises in others. Along the ridges of some of the eastern mountains are found in great abundance the products of the bottom of the ocean. These evidences show that at some period, when the mountains were formed, a great convulsion of nature raised the bottom of the ocean to thousands of feet above its level. Evidences of this exist in various parts not only of the United States, but of the world. You ask, If this erosion goes on and the mountains and hills are carried down and filled in to the low places of the ocean, what is the final destiny of the earth that now appears above the surface of the ocean? Evidently if the earth should remain without further upheaval, at some time in the far, far future the land would gradually wear down and be carried off into the ocean and the ocean would gradually rise, owing to its restricted area, until it would again cover the whole earth as it undoubtedly did at one time in the earth's history. This fact need not occasion any uneasiness on the part of those who are living to-day or for millions of years to come.