10 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. viii. 



number, though detailed narratives of two only were published. 

 The first, in 1841, was made in pursuance of his determination 

 to verify for himself, as far as possible, all geological facts to 

 which he had occasion to refer — a determination justified not 

 only by the love of truth, but by his own great powers of appre- 

 ciating the nature and relations of phenomena, and of presenting 

 them to the minds of others. He had, on this occasion, an 

 invitation to lecture for the Lowell Institute of Boston, which 

 kept him some time in that city ; but he took time to travel 

 very extensively both in Canada and the United States. 



His second visit to America was made in 1845, and on this 

 occasion, he merely called at Halifax, and did not travel in 

 British North America. He devoted his whole time to the 

 United States, and more especially to the South. In 1853, he 

 was named one of the Commissioners to the Great Exhibition in 

 New York, and on this third visit he landed in Halifax and spent 

 some time in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. 



I had the pleasure of first meetiug Sir Charles in 1841, when 

 he spent a few weeks in the Maritime Provinces of British 

 America. I had just returned from the University of Edinburgh 

 and from the somewhat careful training in mineralogy and 

 lithology of the veteran Jameson, and had already given some 

 time and study to the Carboniferous rocks of my native province. 

 In these circumstances, the visit of Lyell was most opportune for 

 me ; and from my local knowledge, I was able to give him some 

 aid in unravelling those complexities of the Carboniferous beds, 

 to which at the time his attention was earnestly directed. I 

 accordingly accompanied him in the remainder of his tour in 

 Nova Scotia, and after his departure, followed up his work 

 in districts which he had been unable to reach. We have met 

 many times since, both in England and in this country, and 

 have regularly corresponded down to within a very short time of 

 his death ; and I have ever found him a warm friend, and 

 intensely interested in all that concerned the growth of natural 

 science in this country. 



The benefits rendered by Sir Charles to American Geology in 

 his several visits to this continent, it would not be easy to over- 

 estimate. At the time of his first visit, few English geologists 

 had seen those great breadths of the older and of the more 

 recent formations by which this continent is distinguished, or 

 had the means of realizing for themselves the resemblances and 



