The Royal Society of Canada. 75 



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THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA. 



The fourteenth meeting of the Royal Society of Canada was 

 held in Ottawa, May 15th, 16th, and 17th, under the presidency of Mr- 

 }. M. Le Moine, of Quebec. The meeting was full of interest. A large 

 attendance of fellows at the various sittings of the different sections for the 

 reading of papers, coupled with an unusually large attendance and in- 

 creased interest in the public lectures and entertainments, mark this 

 meeting as one of the most successful in the history of the Society. 



The four sections of French Literature, etc., of English 

 Literature, of the Mathematical, Physical and Chemical 

 Sciences, of the Geological and Biological Sciences, met in the 

 Provincial Normal School. There were thirty titles and abstracts of 

 papers to be read before these sections, according to the programme, 

 viz : six in section I ; eight in section JI ; nine in section III ; and 

 seven in section IV. 



Of the papers read, the following fall more or less directly in line 

 with researches carried on by members of the Ottawa Field Natura- 

 lists' Club, and are here noted : 



/. The Geology of the proposed Ottawa Ship Canal. By K. IV. Ells, L.L.D., ami 

 A. E. Barlow, M.A. 



The route of the proposed ship canal, via the Ottawa, the Mattavva and French 

 Rivers, and Lake Nipissing, is of great interest, both from the geological and com- 

 mercial standpoint. It furnishes a comparatively short waterway between the great 

 lakes and the head of ship navigation on the St. Lawrence, and crosses, for several 

 hundreds of miles, the great series of Laurentian or Archaean rocks, nearly at right 

 angles to their strike. In the eastern portion of this Laurentian complex is included 

 the typical area described by Sir William Logan as the Grenville series, which in- 

 cludes foliated and stratified gneisses, granites, syenites, crystalline limestone, anor- 

 thosites, etc. These extend westward along; the Ottawa for nearly two hundred 

 miles, while in the western part of the section, these characteristic rocks have given 

 place to a great development of granites anil syenites, in places, foliated, but fre- 

 quently massive. From their characters, as seen both in the field and under the 

 microscope, these latter are clearly intrusive, anil in large part are more recent in age 

 than the crystalline limestone and associated gneisses which they have replaced. 

 Areas of Huronian rocks, known as the Hastings series, also occur, while the sedi- 

 mentary formations from the Potsdam to the Utica, both inclusive, have an extensive 

 development along the lower Ottawa, and occasional small outliers of fossiliferous 

 limestone are seen in the vicinity of Mattawa, and on the islands in the eastern portion 

 of Lake Nipissing. Heavy deposits of sand, gravel and clay also occur at various 

 points along the several river channels, and form an important geological feature. 



2. Note on the occurrence of Primnoa Reseda on the Coast of British Columbia. 

 By J. F. ll'hiteaves. 



P. reseda is a large tree like Alcyonarian coral, which was known to I'allas and 

 Linnaeus more than a hundred years ago. On the eastern side of the Atlantic its 



