.%. ^O- ^r^:z IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I lie "^* 1^ U& 2.5 2.2 2.0 1.8 1.25 |||.4 |l.6 ■» 6" - ' ► V 7). Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. MS80 (716) 872-4S03 ^ : (meaning "CON- TINUED"), or the symbol y (meaning "END"), whichever applies. Un des symboles suivants apparaltra sur la darniire image de cheque microfiche, selon Ie cas: Ie symbols — ► signifie "A SUIVRE". Ie symbols y signifie "FIN". aire iVIaps, plctes, charts, etc.. may be filmed at different reduction ratios. Those too large to be entirely included in one exposure are filmed beginning in the upper left hand corner, left to right and top to bottom, as many frames as required. The following diagrams illustrate the method: Le« cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent Atre filniiv] ^ des taux de reduction diffArents. Lorsque Ie document est trop grand pour Atre reproduit en un seul clichA, il est f ilmA A partir de Tangle supArieur gauche, de gauche A droite, et de haut en bas, en prenant Ie nombre d'images nAcessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mAthode. by Si rata fled to ent une pelure. Faqon A 1 2 3 32X 1 2 3 4 5 6 I. Section IV., 1884. [1] Tr.vns. Roy. Soc. Canada. I. — On some Relations of Geological Work in Canada and the Old World. By J. W. Dawson, C.M.a., LL.D., F.R.S., &c. (Read May 21, 1884.) I do not propose in this paper to attempt the impossible task of discussing all the points of contact between the geology of Canada and that of other parts of the world, but meiely to notice a few instances likely to be of interest to this section, which have come under my own observation, of the relations of scientilic work and workers on the two sides of the Atlantic, — relations which are daily becoming more intimate, and which it may be hoped will be greatly strengthened by the approaching visit of the British Association to Montreal. Beginning with the older crystalline rocks, one is struck with the large amount of attention at present bestowed on petrology, and especially on the microscopic examination of rocks. I can recall the time when these subjects scarcely excited any interest, and were almost entirely neglected by English geologists. The ciirrent now sets strongly in this direction, and many of the younger men are enthusiastic lithologists, while many of the warmest and most earnest di.scussions in the Geological Society relate to subjects of this kind. In connection with this, the comparison of the pre-Cambriau rocks of Britain with the larger and more complete development of these formations in Canada is pursuntian of Canada ; while overlying deposits, hirgely made up apparently of igneous products, seemed to occupy the position of tlie Arvonian series. The rjuarries, from which the ancient Egyptians obtained their fine blocks of red granite and diorite, are in intrusive dykes and masses penetrating these old stratilied rocks. Sw. 1\'., 1884. 1. 4 \ J. W. DAWSON ON SOME EELATIONS OF Nothing can be more remarkable than the strong similarity in mineral character of these ancient rocks iu all their wide extension in bv '^h continents. The areas occupied by these pre-Cambrian rocks in Great Britain are so limited, and their statigraphical complexities are so great, that some controversy still exists as to their arrangement ; but the prospect is that they will ere long be admitted on all hands to cor- respond in their order of occurrence with the Canadian series. The long-agitated question of the animal nature of Eozoon Canadense is now in a some- what quiescent state ; but I have been pleased to find a pretty uniform current of opinion in its favour among those best qualified to judge. Dr. Carpenter has for some time been engaged In a careful re-examination of all the more important specimens, with a view to the publication of an exhaustive monograph on the subject, which ie to be illustrated with large and admirably executed figures. I had the pleasure, shortly after ray arrival in England, of spending a few d^ys with Dr. Carpenter and aiding him in this work, as well as of furnishing him with notes of the geological relations and mode of occurrence of the specimens. Thanks to the labours of Hall, Barrande, and Billings, the correlation of the great Silurian series of Europe and America is now in a somewhat complete and satisfactory con- dition. America, which is so eminent in its representation of the life of the Silurian, is still somewhat behind in the recognition of the Cambrian and the determination of its fossils. "We are however steadily advancing in this matter, more especially in Canada, and I hope that the excellent work of Mr. Matthew on these ancient fossils, in connection with this Society, will be continued and enlarged. The re-arrangement and more com- plete display of the Palicozoic fossils iu the new Museum at South Kensington will place the means of comparison with British forms in a more advanced position than formerly. When iu Belgium, I had the pleasure of examining the interesting collections of Devonian plants of that country whith have been described by M. Crepin. I was struck with the close correspondence of the forms with ours in Canada, — a correspondence more marked in the specimens themselves than in the published engravings, owing to close similarity of the state of preservation and the containing rock. In Britain also, my friends, the Eev. Thomas Brown of Edinburgh and Mr. Kidston of Stirling, have been extending our knowledge of the Devonian flora, and find, as in this country, the lower portions of that system to be characterized by such forms as Psilopln/ton, Arlhrostigma and Profotaxiles, while the ferns of the genus, Archaopfem, and Lepidodendroid species are equally note- worthy in its upper members. As yet no flora corresponding in richness to that of our Middle Devonian or Middle Erian has been recognized. Very remarkable discoveries of millipedes and scorpions have been made by Peaiih in the Devonian and Lower Carboniferous of Scotland, which place that country far in advance of America, though Nova Scotia alForded the earliest Carboniferous millipede known. That millipedes existed in the Lower Devonian of Scotland is a fact in harmony with the occurrence of winged insects in the Middle Devonian of New Brunswick. Mr. Peach's discoveries also indicate very remarkable affinities between the scorpions and the eurypterid crustaceans, some of which seem to have been aquatic scorpions. With reference to the Carboniferous flora, I had the pleasure of spending a week with my old friend, Prof Williamson of Manchester, and of inspecting under the microscope the magnificent series of preparations of strui'tures which he has been accumulating for many 4 \ GEOLOGICAL WORK IK CANADA AI^D THE OLD WORLD. of these ited, and 5 to their ds to cor- 1 a sonie- f opinion ime been 3W to the ited with irrival in work, as 3ciirreucQ the great "tory con- ihirian, is ion of its nada, and onnection acre coin- will place )rmerly. ections of as struck ence more [J to close ly friends, extending •ortions of ^mlotaxiles, lally note- liat of our by Peach itry far in millipede I harmony vick. Mr. as and the ,voek with oscope the ] for many years, and describing and figuring from time to time in the Transactions of the Royal Society. I was able to make many notes of these specimens, which I trust will be useful in advancing the knowledge of this flora in Canada ; and I feel convinced that the facts accumulated by Prof "Williamson and those recently obtained by G-rand'Eury and others in France are rapidly placing us within reach of a comprehension of the affinities and relationships of the plants of the coal period, much more accurate and definite than we have heretofore obtained. While new and unexpected conclusions may be reached on this subject, I have reason to belieA'e that many of the suggestions and anticipations, which I have ventured to throw out with reference to the plants of the Nova Scotia coal-formation, and which I have based on facts of mode of occurrence as well as of structure, will be verified and confirmed. More especially it will, I think, appear that there have been grouped, under the general name of Sigillaria, plants of very different ranks ; while defi- nite characters will be found to separate the greater part of the plants known as Cordaites from the true conifers of the genera, Dadoxylon and Araucarites ; and the humble plants of the group of Rhizocarps will be discovered to have been more important in the Palaeozoic than has hitherto been supposed. The coal-field of Nova Scotia has afforded a very remarkable group of terrestial batrachians, not precisely paralleled elsewhere. But recercly Fritsch has described, from the so-called gas-coal deposits of the Permo-carboniferous of Bohemia, a number of very similar forms, some of them belonging to the same genera with those of Nova Scotia. The earliest known indications of Carboniferous Batrachians were the footprints discovered by Logan at Horton Bluff" and described '>y me as Hylopus Logani; but we have not found actual bones at so low an horizon. I saw, however, in the collections of Dr. Traquair in Edinburgh, a skull of a large batrachian not yet described, from beds of the same age in Scotland. The peculiar development of the Cretaceous and Laramie rocks in our Western Terri- tories, the rich angiospermous flora which they contain, the insensible gradation upward c : the Cretaceous into the Tertiary, and the small relative development of the marine parts of the formations, have given a special and exceptional character to these deposits. Recent discoveries are, however, tending to assimilate the floras of the old and new worlds in the Cretaceous epoch ; and in Great Britain, Mr. Starkie Gardner has recently shown that the Eocene flora corresponds more nearly with that of America than had here- tofore been supposed, and that certain floras formerly regarded as Miocene are really older.' In this way much of the apparent discrepancy will be removed, and we shall probably be no longer told by European paheobotanists that floras, which on stratigraphical grounds or the evidence of animal fossils we know to be Eocene or Cretaceous, are iu their estima- tion Miocene. I had myself occasion to observe in the Cretaceous of tlu; Lebanon, where, however, the marine limestones are very largely developed, a formation with sandstones, shales, and clays, containing shells of Ostreac and nodules of ironstone, as well as fossil wood ' Since writing tlio tibovo. I obsorvo that in a pajx^r road before tlio British Aasooiation, Mr. Starkio Gardner has somowliat incorrectly stated tlie position of Canadian geologists as to tlie first apix'arar.i'o of the CretaceouH llora, wiiii'h, as explaini'd iu my pajwr in the Transactions of this Society for last year, first presents Dicotyledo- nous trees, not in the earliest Cretaceous, l)ut in the Middle Crota<'eoU8. Our Ijowest Cretaceous holds a strictly Mesozoic llora, so far as known. M 4 J. W. DAWSON ON SOME RELATIOKS OF aud beds of lig-uite, aud whifh, in character and geological horizon, may be held to repre- sent the Dakota group or the Lower Belly Eiver group of the "VTest. The opinions of geologists in England, with leference to the vexed question of the glatdal drift, are, I think, gradiially diverging from the extreme glacialist views, recently current, to a position of greater moderation. The great submergence of the later Pleisto- cene, evidenced by the occurrence of marine shells and sea beaches at high levels, has forced itself on the attention of geologists in Great Britain, as it has long since done in Canada, and has produced the general conviction that much of the transport of boulders and drift has been due to the agency of floating ice. My friend, Mr. Milne Home, who has for some time been the chairman of the boilder committee of Scotland, informs me that the careful mapping and study of these travelled masses has thrown much new light on their directions and mode of conveyance, and that a conference between the English and Scottish committees is to be held, and will probably still farther aid in the elucidation of these points. It would 8eem that a similar committee, or series of committees, might be profitably employed in recording the statistics of Canadian travelled boulders, and much preliminary information might be compiled from the reports of the Geological Survey and the papers published in scientific periodicals. When in the East, I had an opportunity of satisfying myself as to the occurrence of a great Pleistocene subraergence in the Mediterranean regions, parallel to that in Northern Europe and America and succeeded in like manner by a continental period, — a fact very important with reference to the later geological history and physical geography of the old continent. 1"^-? details of these observations will appear in the London Geological Magazine. The su _^. ct of prehistoric man is at present one of intense interest, ai. i is pursued both by geologists and archaiologists. In Canada we are familiar with the fact that oul modern aborigines afford, in their manners and implements and weapons, much materiar for explaining ^He traces of prehistoric men in older countries. Dr. Daniel Wilson has most ably illustrated this in his admirable volumes on "Prehistoric Man," and I have myself endeavoured to direct attention to it in my little work entitled " Fossil Men and their Kepresentatives" ; while by a singular coincidence, M. Quatrefages has adopted almost the same title, " L'Homme fossile et I'Homme saiivage," for his recent valuable work on this subject. The admirable collections now accumulated in public museums, and especially those at St. Germaius and at Bnissels, and in the British Museum, with such private collections as those of Mr. John Evans and Prof. Boyd Dawkins, bring very clearly before the mind of a Canadian student, the striking resemblance between the arts of the perished peoples of primeval Europe and those so lately universal in the American continent. The Smithsonian Institution, at Washington, has rightly appreciated the importance of collecting extensively and preserving for future reference the monuments of the Stone Age of America. Our efforts in this direction have as yet been comparatively feeble, but it is to be hoped that they will bo greatly extended in the time to come. Some of the mo.st interesting remains of prehistoric man in tLe world are those of the Lebanon range; both because of the abundance and richness of the k.avern deposits of that region, and the fact that some of these antedate the old Phenician colonization of the coast of Syria, When at Beyrut I had the opportunity of making colit.^^.'ons in some of the most interesting caverns of the region, and obtained evidence, which I have given in a \ to repre- 011 of the i, recently 2r Plbisto- evels, has ;e done in boulders , who has 3 me that ' light on glish and idation of might be md much irvey and rence of a Northern fact very of the old geological sued both that oul 1 material ''ilson has id I have L and their ilraost the rk on this especially ;h private ,rly before e perished ent. The collectiug le Age of ut it is to ose of the its of that on of the n some of [Tiven m a \ GEOliOGlCAL WORK IN CANADA AND THE OLD WORLD. paper read before the Victoria Institute, that the oldest cavern deposits, containing remains of the horse and the rhinoceros, belong to a period in which the physical character of the country was somewhat different from its present condition, and which may be charac- terized as Post-glacial or Antediluvian. Other deposits come up to the time of the Phenician colony. The subjects referred to in this paper have been but slightly sketched ; but it may be interesting to bear in mind that we are workers together with so many able men on the Eastern side of the Atlantic, whose works we may study, while we emulate their suc- cessful labours. I cherish the hope at some future time to direct your attention more specially to some at least of the subjects cursorily noticed in the present paper.