No. 6.] DAWSON — FOSSIL SEAL. 341 



Ottawa, obtained a nodule with certain bones enclosed in it from 

 the Post-pliocene clays of Green's Creek, on the Ottawa, which 

 have offered so many beautiful specimens of the Capelin and 

 other fishes, and also of marine shells of northern and cold water 

 types. Mr. Billings regarded the bones as those of the limbs of 

 " a small animal of aquatic habit," but, not being able to deter- 

 mine the species, sent the specimen to Dr. Leidy, of Philadelphia. 

 He recognized the bones as those of the hinder extremity of a 

 young seal, but of what species was uncertain. A good figuure and 

 description were published in the first volume of the Naturalist 

 in 1856. No further information bearing directly on this 

 fossil was secured until the present year, when the bone now 

 exhibited was obtained by Dr. Grant from a boy who had col- 

 lected it at the same place and in the same bed in which the first 

 mentioned specimen was found. It is the left ramus of the 

 lower jaw of a young seal, containing a canine and four molar 

 teeth, with an impression of the filth. It enables us now to 

 affirm that the species is Phoca Groenlandica — (Pagophilus 

 Groenlandlcus of Gray's Catalogue) the common Greenland 

 seal, and it is of such size that it may have belonged to the same 

 individual which furnished the bones described in 1856, or at 

 least to an animal of the same species and of similar age. 



Skeletons of larger individuals of this species, which still lives 

 in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, have been found in the Post- 

 pliocene clays near Montreal. Portions of them may be seen in 

 the museums of the Geological Survey and of the University. 



This specimen thus carries us back to that glacial period when 

 the valleys of the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa were occupied 

 with the cold ice-laden waters of the Arctic Sea, furnishing a fit 

 habitat for the Greenland seal and the fishes which are its food. 

 It also shows how one discovery in geology serves to throw light 

 upon another, and how our knowledge grows little by little in the 

 lapse of years; and it indicates the value of a society like this, 

 in treasuring up the little instalments of facts accruing from time 

 to time, and so building up the knowledge of the natural history 

 of our country. 



The fossil fishes found in the nodules of the clay at Green's 

 Creek, and catalogued in my notes on the Post-pliocene of 

 Canada are, Mallotus Villosus, the capelin, Cyclojpterus lumpus, 

 the lump-sucker, and a species of Gasterosteus. I have also 

 fragments that seem to indicate a small Coitus. 



