No. 5. J NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 297 



•over-scrupulous antiquarianism which would revive uncertain 

 and forgotten names to the exclusion of those sanctioned by long 

 use. There is perhaps little hope that these evils can be wholly 

 remedied iu the present state of science, when there is in this 

 respect no king in Israel, and every man does what is right in 

 his own eyes. We believe however that the old rules sanctioned 

 by the British Association, with a moderate amount of self-abne- 

 gation and common sense, will be sufficient to secure all that is 

 really necessary. 



The lamented death of Mr. Billings is a heavy blow to this 

 Society, as well as to the cause of science in Canada ; and one 

 of our meetings was appropriately occupied with an obituary 

 notice by his successor, Mr. Whiteaves. It is not necessary for 

 me to refer to the details contained in that notice. I may re- 

 mark however that Mr. Billings maybe considered as the creator 

 of Canadian Palaeontology, in so far as the Invertebrate fossils of 

 the Palaeozoic rocks are concerned. This department he built 

 up from its foundations, and built so extensively and so well, that 

 it will be long before his work can be hidden from view by anv 

 additions to be made by his successors. As a worker he was 

 painstaking aud cautious rather than rapid, and his results were 

 always regarded with respect and confidence by those engaged in 

 similar pursuits elsewhere. He was not a mere describer of 

 species, but a geologist of sound and broad views, and his earlier 

 works show a power of lucid and popular presentation of his 

 subject which it is perhaps to be regretted he did not follow up 

 in his later years*. One of his greatest failings was a certain 

 shrinking from publicity, which rendered him indisposed to take 

 a prominent position even in the work of our own Society, and 

 still more tended to prevent him from entering into any presen- 

 tation of his favourite studies to the general public in any other 

 form than that of official reports and scientific papers. Such 

 men as Mr. Billings are produced in small numbers in any 

 country, and it may be long before Canada possesses as one of 

 her own sons a second Billings. It is however a remarkable 

 coincidence that such a man should have been preparing himself 

 to second the work of Sir William Logan just at the time when 

 Palaeontological work had become a prime necessity for the Ca- 

 nadian Survey. 



I have reserved to the last some remarks connected with the 

 subject of my own paper on the G-eology of the Intercolonial 



