1901] Ami— Annual Address. 209 



these respects an ideal palaeontologist, and iiis contributions to 

 the palaeozoic faunas of America are of tremendous value. There 

 was a large element in his results which his contemporaries in 

 American palaeontology did not infringe upon nor compete with, 

 the faunas of the early Siluric ; and had he not lived and laboured, 

 or were our knowledge of these faunas debillingsed, the science 

 would be thrown backward a generation. There is little danger 

 of future palaeontologists forgetting their obligations to Elkanah 

 Billings, father of a thousand palaeozoic children. His name will 

 always remain familiar to, and honoured by the workers in the 

 science to which he devoted his life." 



Prof. R. P. Whitfield thus writes: " 1 never met Mr. E. 

 Billings but twice, once at Albany, N.V., and again at 

 Montreal while looking through the Survey Museum with 

 a class of students from the Troy Polytechnic Institute. Mr. 

 Billings was sick at the time but came into the Collec- 

 tion and spent some time with us and interested us all much 

 with the collections then under his charge. I have been familiar 

 with his work in Palaeontology and also with some of his more 

 popular articles in the magazines and have admired his keen 

 appreciation of the nature of the objects with which he was deal- 

 ing. He must have been a close student of Nature and have 

 fully appreciated and understood the bearings of the objects with 

 which he was dealing. 



" His Palaeontological work is very well known and thoroughly 

 appreciated among all workers in that line of investigation and 

 will stand as a lasting Monument to his credit." 



The Hon. C. D. Walcott, Director of the U. S. Geological 

 Survey, Washington, D.C., has sent the following communica- 

 tion : — 



" I am very much pleased to learn that it is intended to 

 present a memorial portrait of the late Mr, E. Billings to the 

 Geological Survey Museum, It will be a fitting tribute to the 

 man who did so much to assist Sir William Logan in un- 

 ravelling the stratigraphic geology of the Paleeozoic rocks in 

 Canada. I have always regretted that I was not personally 

 acquainted with Mr. Billings, as I was impressed, when study- 



