272 The Ottawa Naturalist. [February 



tions which characterized the formations which were laid down with 

 the coal. To these are appended notes of ethnologfical value 

 regarding the Micmac language, and other notes of interest. 



In the land animals of the Coal Period, Sir William 

 Dawson discovered much that was new to science, and opened up 

 this subject in a masterly way, and it has since expanded to a 

 marked degree. His descriptions of the Microsauria which he 

 found buried in the basal portions of the fossil trees, along the 

 famous Joggins section of Cumberland County, Nova Scotia, will 

 ever remain as ont of his most conspicuous and important 

 writings. In them he has reconstructed an extinct fauna of quad- 

 rupeds which inhabited the shores and shallows of the Eastern 

 Atlantic coast, and of the estuaries and lagoons of the great Coal 

 period, besides describing shells and insects of those lakes and 

 bays — all air-breathing types of intense interest — the first of many 

 races that were to follow in the chain of geological times and 

 develop to higher forms in subsequent times. His numerous 

 writings upon " Eozoon Catiadense '' — the " Dawn of Life" 

 organism — have perhaps more than any others tended to make 

 his name famous in the field of Science. In periodicals and 

 magazines on both sides of the Atlantic, Sir William contributed 

 a great number of papers and articles bearing upon the origin of 

 the masses of laminated rock found in the Laurentian rocks of 

 Canada which Sir William Logan, Dr. T. Sterry Hunt, Dr. W. 

 B. Carpenter, Prof. Murie and many microscopists, naturalists 

 and geologists held to be of organic origin. 



Sir William was highly systematic in all the work he under- 

 took. His was a busy life, but he was always calm, and met even 

 the humblest child with courtly grace, generous spirit and dignity, 

 commanding the respect and admiration of all who knew him. 



The McGill of to-day is the result of his arduous labours in 

 connection with that educational centre. He had the peculiar 

 faculty of enlisting support and co-operation on the part of those 

 with whom he came into contact. 



As a writer, who sought to present in a popular form the 

 results of geological science to a larger audience than greeted 

 him on the college benches, he was eminently successful. Such 

 works as the "Meeting Place of Geology and History," "The 



