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the Cretaceous, with the finest op'^'ortunities for the study of the more 

 rect-nt geological i-h^noniena, such as pertain to ihe glacial and i ost 

 glacial times. Here we hive the broad areas of the Silurian lying 

 against the buttresses of the old Laurentian hills in as horizontal a 

 posit on as when first deposited, and there we have the same series of 

 rocks, f ilded and tw'sted, overturned and faulted, and metamorphosed 

 to such an extent that all traces of their early and original character 

 have apparently departed. AVonderful displays of the enormous foldings 

 to wh' h the earth's crust has been subjected are visible in the Rocky 

 Mountain uplift on the west, and in the fractured and crumpled char- 

 acter of the rocks in the sections east of the St. Lawrence with their 

 tangled complex of strata of widely separated horizons. 



To attempt to give even an outline of the work of the Survey 

 dur'ng the past twenty years would require a far longer time than we 

 have at our disposal this evening, and we can but point out some of 

 the most prominent points in the policy of exploration which have been 

 pursued. Prior to the admission of the North-West Territory into the 

 Do'"^''.inion we were practically destitute of any knowledge of that great 

 country. What information we possessed was derived from the travels 

 and explorations, principally, of the Palliser-Hector expedition of thirty- 

 five years ago, from the Hind Saskatchewan expedition of the same 

 date, as well as from the journals of Hudson Bay Factors and the 

 story of search parties in the quest after Franklin, At best it was 

 sufficiently meagre. Its great wealth of soil and minerals was almost 

 entirely unknown, and the general concensus of opinion appeared to be 

 that the grea'er part of the immense plain country, bounded by a sea 

 of mountains on the west, and with its great inland seas and streams, 

 navigable for many hundreds of miles, as fitted only for the support 

 of the Indian, the buffalo and the fur bearing animals, and likely to be 

 of but little prospective importance to the white settler. Direclly 

 foUowmg its incorporation iu" rlie Dominion, exploratory parties were 

 fitted out by the Geological Survey which traversed the great plains, the 

 passes of the Rockies, the country of the Peace River, and the 

 Saskatchewan. Year after year has this policy been carried on till now 

 these scientific explorations, geological and botanical, have explored a 

 very large area indeed, reaching northw liU nearly to the mouth of the 



