Mr Darwin having kindly sent me a copy of your Lordship’s note to him of last November, expressing interest in the movement to restore the natural scenery of Niagara Falls, I sometime since sent you a copy of the report of the New York Commission on the subject.

I am sorry to say that though advocated by a great number of the more eminent men of letters and other esteemed citizens both of Canada and of the United States and received with considerable official favor, the legislative bodies of the Dominion, of the Province of Ontario and of the State of New York have all adjourned without taking favorable action upon the project. A cautious policy with reference to the present Presidential canvass had to do with the failure in New York. In Canada I am advised that the chief obstacle lay in the difficulty of gaining a serious interest among members of Parliament in a subject so far without the field of their ordinary political discussions.

The agitation will be revived in the autumn and I beg to say that an inquiry upon the subject in the House of Lords as kindly proposed in your lordship’s note to Mr Darwin, would, as an indication of the interest of the subject to the world beyond Canada and the United States, have a valuable [498] influence and be gratefully regarded by those who have here led the movement writing in whose behalf,