<^> ^/%^. 'V^ v\ X '^ %^ IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 ^^ IIIIM I.I 1.25 IM |||||22 iig mil 2.0 1.8 1.4 1.6 <^ /2 VI # ^^ W -'>-" A y /^ >p3 ;^m '" - ^•ammtm (4K0L0GICAL SCIKNCK IS INDEBTED TO CANADA. 8 Having been myself mixed up with the farther questions that have arisen as to the animal nature of Eo:;oon, and the vegetable origin of the abundant graphite of the Middle Laurentian, I shall say nothing of these farther than this, that if our Canadian con- clusions should be substantiated, we shall stand here also in advance of the rest of the world. In like manner I abstain here from entering into the question of the validity of the Montalban, Tacdnian and Keweenian of our colleague, Dr. Hunt, which are now subjects of earnest discussion, but I believe are in great part, at least, based on natural facts per- ceived by Logan in his original examinations of the Pre-Cambrian formations of the west, but more distinctly defined by Hunt, and which may eventually give a new triumph to Canadian geology. I may say here that my own observations have convinced me of the reality of the succession of (1) a Lower Laurentian series, the Trembling Mountain gneiss of I ogan ; (2) a Middle Laurentian, the Grenville series of Hunt ; (3) an Upper Laurentian, the Labradoria]! or Norian series; (4) the Huronian series ; (.5) the Animikie series ; (6) the Keweenian -series. All these, except, perhaps, the last, are Pre-Cambrian, and belong to the Eozoic period. Of the Montalban I cannot speak so certainly. There is such a series, and this of great importance ; but I do not know from my own observations its precise geological position. I need scarcely say that the researches of Dr. Hunt in the chemical and dynamical geology of the.se ancient rocks and their relations to the origin oi" continents and mountain chains stand unsurpassed, and of themselves give to Canada a clear title to preeminence in this department. Before leaving this subject, I may mention an attack which has been made on Sir W. Logan by an American writer, on the ground that the name " Laurentian " had been preoc- cupied by Desor. It seems that the hitter had used the word " Lawrentian " to express the Pleistocene deposits of the St. Lawrence valley. But the name never gained any cur- rency, and Ijogan's use of the term, " Laurentian," for the old trystalliue series was only a little later, — Logan having applied the name in 1854, while Desor's use of the similar name "Lawrentian," had occurred in 1851. Logan and Hunt, who cooperated in the matter, based the name, not on the St. Lawren<-e River, but on the old name Laurenlides, applied by Garneau to the mountain range composed of these rocks. In point of fact, the name " Laurentian " was based on the mountains composed of these rocks, and the name ■' Lawrentian " on the river itself; and the latter fell to the ground as useless and inappro- priate. The discovery of the rich Cambrian Fauna of St. John, New Brunswick, and in connec- tion with this, that of the fossil plants of the neighboring Devonian beds, belong to the late Prof C. F. Hartt, and to our colleagues, Mr. G-. F. Matthew and Prof. iJailey. Of these discoAeries I have remarked : " The collection and determination of the Cambrian fossils of what is now known as the Acadian group, and the excavation of the numerous Devonian plants of the same district, constitute in my judgment two of the most important advances ever made in the palteontology of Eastern America." Hartt published his first report on tliese fossils in 18G5, and they were more fully described and illustrated in the second edition of my "' Acadian Geology" in 1868. It is true that long before this time the Para- iloxides Harlnni of the Massachusetts shales had been discovered, and Emmons had endeav- oured to illustrate the fossils of the Taconic system. But little attention had been given J ■J "i r 4 SIR J. W. DAWSON ON SOME POINTS IN WHICH AMERICAN % to these lat^ts, though aw early as 1862 they had attra«'ted the attention of the great Bohe- mian palaaontologist, Barraude. Any one who studies the niaguiiicent volumes of Hall, or the earlier editions of Dana's manual, will see that, iiutil Hartt's discoveries were made, the view of American geologists scarcely extended lower in the Palmozoic than the Pots- dam sandstone. The work so well begun by Hartt has been followed up by Matthew, and we have, in the last volume of our Transactions, a m*;moir in which many new forms are added to this ancient fauna, and we hope at our present meeting to have for the first time a subdivision of its fossils according to age, parallel to that ascertained in Western Europe. In a paper to be read at the present meeting, Mr. Matthew is able to tabulate sixty-five species and twenty-one varietal forms, from the lowest division of the Acadian group, corresponding to the earlier Cambrian of Europe. A curious accident has recently happened in connection with Hartt's collections. These remained after his death in the United States, and were offered for sale, and should have been acquired for our Canadian collections. The fossil plants I purchased at my own expense for the McGill College collection, but the primordial fossils I had not moans to redeem, and the Survey was at the time equally impecunious. They remained conse- quently in Cornell University, and Hartt's types, which Mr. Matthew should have had as the basis of his work, have been republished as a Bulletin of the United States Geological Survey, illustrated in a far more sumptuous manner than I was able to HfTord in my " Acadian Geology," and there can be little doubt that the effect will be that abroad an officer of that Survey will practically receive the credit which should belong to Canadians, though he has done little if anything to advance the knowledge of the subject beyond the point where Hartt left it. - Prof Bailey, who has been following up the stratigraphy of these rocks as ably as the fossils have been worked by Matthew, has directed my attention to the fact that in a recent, somewhat pretentious volume issued in Cambridge, the work of Canadian geologists in these rocks is sneered at, and that by unfair (Stations of statements made at different times and during the progress of discovery, we are made to appear as at variance with one another. On this subject I would say that, in my own connection with the geology of the Maritime Provinces, I have ever endeavoured to pro- mote the work of my younger geological friends ; have at once admitted any new dis- covery, even when contradicting the conclusions I had formed from a less complete induc- tion of facts ; and that the work of Hartt, Matthew and Bailey in the complicated and disturbed coast rocks of southern New Brunswick has produced results in stratigraphy and paljEontology more accurate, complete and important in the interests of science, than any that can be shown with reference to the continuation of these same rocks in New England. If the holding of different opinions on debatable points, and the free and active dis- cussion of chese opinions is to be a ground of accusation against Canadian geologists, I fear the next great group of rocks, that Siluro-Cambriau series to which Logan gave the name " Quebec Group," may afford more ground of complaint. It would be useless here to attempt to summarize the discussions in which Hall, Emmons, Dana, and many other American geologists have taken part, or the bold and masterly way in which Logan and Billings cut the Gordian knot, or the subsequent discussions of Hunt, Selwyn and Mac- farlane. I have elsewhere noticed these subjects, and hope to do so again before long. I may content myself with quoting a general statement on the subject, made in 1879, and still I think correct. the Sti. trac some the of Si, Wiilj pare I fJiose Canad, and th tricts, ^0 Gas; JnarJceo «!• Hot, must tal ^'" tJiei^ kcted tc I IJPIiWllWilli i. " ■ ■ '■ f|. ' Wi ii ny i ) | p||y i GEOLOGICAL SOIKNCK IS INDEBTKD To CANADA. i*l9, and Wheu Sii William I^gaii commenced the Geological Survey of Canada in 1842, the older rocks, in so far as his field was concerned, wore almost a terra incognUa, and very scanty means existed for unravelling their complexities. The " Silurian System " of Mur- chison had been completed in 1838, »md in the same year Sedgwick had published his classification of the Cambrian rocks. The earlier final reports of the New York Survey were being issued about the time wheu Logan commenced his work. The great works of Hall on the palaeontology of New York had not appeared, and scarcely anything was known as to the comparative palsBontology and geology of Europe and America. Those who can look back on the crude and chaotic condition of our knowledge at that time, can alone ap- preciate the magnitude and difficulty of the task that lay before Sir William Logan. To make the matter worse, the most discordant views as to the relative ages of some of the formations in New York and New England which are continuous with those of Ea«torn Canada, had been maintained by the officers of the New York Survey. Sir William made early acquaintance with some of these difficult formations. His first summer was spent on the coast of Gasp6 and the Baie des Chaleurs, where he saw four great formations, the Quebec group, the Upper Silurian, the Devonian, and the Lower Carboni- ferous, succeeding each other, obviously in ascending order, and each characterized by some fossils, most of which, however, were at that time of very uncertain age. I remember his showing me in the autumn of that year the not'3-books in which he had carefully sketched the straiigraphical arrangements he had observed, and also the forms of charac- teristic fossils. But both wanted an interpreter. The plants of the Gaspe Devonian were undescribed ; many of them of forms till then unheard of. The shells and corals and graptolites of the older formations could be only roughly correlated with some of those in the New York reports. The rock formations are very unlike those of the New York series. Still this work of 1842 and 1843 was plain and easy, compared with that which arose in tracing these formations to the south-west. I may add here that I have since studied some of these G-aspe sections with Sir William's manuscript note-books in my hand, and have been amazed at the extraordinary care and exactitude with which every feature of the rocks had been observed and noted down. Much of the detail in those early note-books of Sir William still remains unpublished. Those who would detract from the work of Sir Wiilliam Logan, if ther3 are any such, should remember these early beginnings, and com- pare them with the massive foundations which have been laid for us to build upon. And now, after the labour of more than thirty years on the part of Sir William and those he had gathered around him, how do these subjects stand? (1) We have all the comparatively flat and undisturbed formations of the great plains of Upper and Lower Canada, our share of the interior continental plateau of America, worked out and mapi^ed, and their fossils characterized so that a child may road them. (2) The complex hilly dis- tricts, with their contorted, disturbed and altered beds, which extend from New England to Gaspe, have been traversed in every direction, the limits of their diflerent formations marked, and a theory as to their ego and structure put forth, which, whether we ac^cept it or not, has in it important features of the truth, and rests on facts on whi<^h every disputant must take his stand. (3) We have the still older formations of the Laurentian hills traced in their sinuous windings, and arranged in an order of succession which must stand whether the names given by Sir William, and now accepted throughout the world, be ob- jected to or not. After the work of Sir William Logan, no cavilling as to names can ever )e-* Mt f twfltw-^r ^" ' ^- '^ ' ^'■■f ' * "'"! '' ' '" -11 1 — iimpi iw P .W'- " •^ SI^B^css 6 SIR J. W. 1»AWS0N ON SOlklE POINTS IN WHICH AMERICAN il ■1.''. deprive Canada of tho glory of being the home ol' the scientific exploration of the Lauren- tian ; and much examination of the ground which he explored enables me to aflirm that no one will ever be able pi>rmaiiently to overset the general leading subdivisions which he established in the Laur(>ntian and Huronian systems. We may sum this matter up, in so far as Sir William Logan's work is concerned, and that of his assistants, and of Hall and Billings in the department of palieontology. Their researches have established : — (1) The general diversity of mineral character in the Paheo- zoic sediments on the Atlantit; slope as compared with the internal plateau of Canada. In these results Bailey, Matthew and Hartt in New Brunswick, and the writer in Nova Scotia, have also borne some part. (2) The establishtnent of the Quebec group of rocks as a series equivalent in age to the Calciferous of America, and to the Arenig and Skiddaw of England, and the elucidation of its peculiar fauna. (3) The tracing out and definition of the peculiar faulted junction of the coastal series with that of the interior plateau, extend- ing from Quebec to Lake Champlain. (4) The definition in connection with the rocks of the Quebec group, by fossils and stratigraphy, of formations extending in age from the Potsdam sandstone to the Upper Silurian, as in contact with this group, in various relations, along its range from the United States frontier to Gaspe ; but the complexities in connec- tion with these various points of contact, and the doubts attending the ages of the several formations, have never yet been fully solved in their details. (5) The identificaf ion of the members of the Quebec group and associated formations with their geological equivalents in districts where these had assumed different mineral conditions, either from the Bssocia- tion of contemporaneous igneous beds and masses, or from subsequent alteration, or both. It is with reference to the results xinder this head, the most difficult of all, that the greater part of the objections to Sir William's views have arisen, and that recent discussions and observations have somewhat modified his conclusions. I may be permitted to add that we hope to haA-^e at this meeting a communication from Prof. Lapworth, so well known as an authority on Graptolites, in which he compares the fossils of this group found in Canada with those of Europe, and while giving important new light on the whole subject, substantiates the conclusions previously arrived at by Canadian geologists, and published in local reports and periodicals. In the wide-spread Siluro-Cambrian, Silurian and Devonian formations of the great interior plateau of the American continent, the geologists of the State of New York have had the start of us, and Hall stands facile princejjs as their interpreter. Hall has, indeed, by his services to Canadian pakeontology, as well as to that of the United States, entitled himself to adoption as a Canadian, and has been so adopted by various societies and insti- tutions, but next to him we have a right to place Billings, whose accurate work and sagacious insight are unsurpassed, and whose industry is evidenced, as I am informed by his successor, by his descriptions of more than one thousand new species and sixty-nine new genera, while he has added not merely to our catalogue of Canadian fossils but to the knowledge of the world. Another special claim of Canada is that to the ownership of the G-uelph formation, a fossiliferous group wanting in the State of New York, and thus iillinsr a gap in the history of life in the Silurian age in America. The fossils of this formation were studied by Mr. Billings, and still more recently the collections of Mr. Townsend, a local collector, have been described by Mr. Whiteaves, and have added several new fauna to those previously known. h: GEOIXXMOAL SCIKNCK IS lNf)KBTEJ) TO CANADA. 7 OrthoBe upper momberH of tho Paltcozoic Heries with which I am myself most couver- Kant, I shall not say much, (-anada has taken the lead in the discovery of insects of the Devonian or Erian jMfriod. We have discovered and described more of the land plants of that period than are known in any other country, perhaps in all other countries ; and the Devonian ilora of Canada is the term of reference and comparison for that of all other countries. New interest has been added to the Erian of America by the discovery, first made known by Mr. Ells, of fossil fishes in rocks of this age at the month of the llcstigouche River, a discovery followed up by Mr. Foord, and by the description of the specii^ns by Mr. Whiteaves. The results are a Lower Devonian fish fauna characterized by Ccphalaspis and Coccosteus and two species of selachians, and an Upper Devonian fauna affording Pterichthys, I'haneropleuron, etc., in all eight species. It is interesting to note that these faunas are associated with plants characteristic respectively of the Lower and Upper Devonian. Much has been done in the Carboniferous flora, and more especially in the discrim- ination of its successive stages, from the Lower Carboniferous to the Permian. To us science owes the earliest discovery iu America of Carboniferous batrai^hians, the oldest stomapod crustacean, and the first known paltcozoic land shells and millipedes ; and some of our grand coast sections and exposures of Carboniferous rocks have become as familiar as household Words to the geologists of every country. Canada is not richly endowed with rocks of the early Mesozoic age, except perhaps in those western districts as yet only imperfectly explored. Our Triassic; rocks and their associated trappean beds were very early studied, and though here we owe mu<'h to Jack- son and Alger, we have also done much for ourselves. I was amused not long ago to see relations of the trappean rocks to the red sandstones long ago established in Nova Scotia, only beginning to be applied to the similar rocks of Connecticut and New Jersey. Our Cretaceous and Tertiary rocks of the Northwest are only m yet partially explored. Still we have already done something to elucidate their structure. The work of Dr. Selwyn, Mr. Eichardson, Dr. G. M. Dawson and Mr. Whiteaves, has thrown much new light on their age and distribution, and we have, I think, taken the lead in disentangling the confusion introdu(;ed into their flora by a too rigid adhesion to arbitrary classifications introduced into p«la;obotauy in Europe. We can show in the Transactions of this Society the first clear and ionsecutive sequence of plants from the Lower Cretaceous into the lilocene, and the conclusions based many years ago on collections made in Canadian terri- tory, are only now being introduced to notice and recognized as correct in the United States. In this connection an important discovery has been made by Mr. Whiteaves in the study of the fossils collected by Mr. Richardson and Dr.Gr. M. Dawson, in the Queen Char- lotte Islands. Mr. Whiteaves, whose previous studies in English Mesozoic fossils entitle him to be regarded as an authority in this matter, finds evidence that beds of the age of t he English Gault exist in these western regions, and that a portion of the so-called Jurassic of the western territories of the United States, is probably Lower Cretaceous. This fact brings the geology of the West more into harmony with that of the eastern part of America, which seems to have been dry land during the Jurassic period. I find, however, that, in a recent article in the " American Journal of Science," Mr. Whiteaves complains, apparently with justice, that while his conclusions have been only partially accepted, credit is denied I it •1 :^ 3 I 's M mmmm 8 S;BJ.W.PAW8O«ON8OMEPOlNTH.Krr0. 8 ■ ^astratiKraphicalobserva- for the corrections lutroduc y disparaged. , coUections made „„. on which hi. '-'';,-r,^Cnc«. P^»-'°""«'''"C ;!?.:; -t«a hed.," The quiet way in which tne^.,j^j„,ted to "»■» j creM by Blh.rd.o„ .ndDr. D.W.™ » ""-'J ^ ^ .eco».p.n.»l « h t^ ^ ^. tC the.e exteneive «»»;^^^: ^g „ it were Bot P'-*"'' onlof "hi.., in di.cu.. .l,.tigr.phic.l work, ."°" "'oUoL lnrope«> I>''''T'°'Twork h„ been done on the leled hy the .imito «n>pl>'-rty «' " „te geological « orK n ^^,.„„,„ '^g tl^ natnrc o^^'^^^^^ ^n aiErming the Oretaceon. P .nt.^_^ ^^^ , ,, , C„«li.n I-»'«."'7,,X„Vthe geology of thi...W«;^«^^^^^^ ^.u«. he by moderate view. a. "> 'h". '^''^^ bM. contribnled to th... « « '''V, ^i^ribntion of m.ny ot iU operation. .t.» •» ^'^f/rhe „e.tern plain, of a v».t hor ont. ^^^„ r.ge to the «'-j--"--::^^LCiiit-» a»p<>*, .^^.x .rp«^»*- "«' t "° Pleistocene beds, and ot very n ^^^ go-called l*ia^i ^^^. fhe ad in ^vorking out the f«-^ ^^ f ^, ,,„tinental glaciat.on wh^ h have g^_^ ^.^^ ^^ t\voided those mo. -trem^^^^^^^^^^^^ tency in the United ^'^''l J ' ,^^, the sober afterthought ot ge fe ^^ ^^^^„, vindicated, and that we «!)'^"/^^^J^, ,f Moulders quite as much to he .^ ^^.^ glaciation of rocks and ^^^^^^^,,rs. A P0--'--\ -^^^j:: ^"^1 upholds in Lrrents and floating ice as to Wg ^^^^^^^^ ^^ T Ta- tU --^ soon be toned direction in Europe, «^»d ^^^ vnews as to the »^»"*^ ;^ee- ^hey m ^.^^. tie United States very extreme ^ws^^, ^^^^^^^^ ,f pV, «,eal f^^^^^^^.p^Hments of Ln within the ^ff^ tZt; viy generally to a few ^''^l^ZJ^yioMo^e^^- I have been able to '^^'^''^ ^^ has taken the lead o has s ^.^^. geological discovery^nwh.^^^^^^^^^^^^ Enough has been «*^\*^f„oT thereby been deterred from >^