No. 1.] SIR WILLIAM EDMOND LOGAN. 45 



conjecture give place to certainty. Now we know that the world 

 of that far-off time was not a lifeless world. Life, whatever that 

 may be, had been joined to matter. 



The first specimens of Eozdon were found by Dr. James 

 Wilson, of Perth ; but at the time of their discovery were regarded 

 merely as minerals. In 1858, however, Mr. J. McMullen, of 

 the Geological Survey, discovered other specimens, the organic 

 origin of which so struck Sir William that in the following 

 year — four years before their true structure and affinities were 

 determined by Dawson and Carpenter — he even exhibited them 

 as fossils at the meeting of the American Association. 



In widely extending our knowledge of the early geological 

 history of the earth, Sir William has done a great work ; indeed 

 this may be regarded as his greatest work. Its importance has 

 everywhere been recognized, and the name Laurentian, which 

 he chose for the rocks at the bottom of the geological scale in 

 America, has crossed the Atlantic, and is now applied to the 

 homotaxial rocks of Europe. Sir Roderick Murchison, who 

 dedicated the fourth edition of " Siluria " to Sir William Logan, 

 even substituted Laurentian for " Fundamental Gneiss," the 

 name which he had given to the rocks of the West Highlands of 

 Scotland. "I at first," says Murchison, '-termed them 'Funda- 

 mental Gneiss, 5 and soon after, following my distinguished friend, 

 Sir William Logan, I applied to them his term, ' Laurentian,' 

 and thus clearly distinguished them from the younger gneissic and 

 micaceous crystalline rocks of the Central and Eastern High- 

 lands, which were classed as metamorphosed Lower Silurian." 



Logan was not a voluminous writer, and during the latter 

 years of his life writing was a great effort to him. Occasional 

 papers from his pen have appeared in the Transactions of the 

 Geological Society of Loudon, in the^Canadian Naturalist and 

 the Canadian Journal, and some of these have already been 

 referred to ; but most of what he has written is to be found in the 

 Reports of Progress annually submitted to the Government, and 

 in that invaluable book, the Geology of Canada, which is, to 

 a large extent, a digest of what is contaiued in the reports 

 published previous to 1863. He sometimes expressed himself 

 quaintly, but everything he wrote is clear and exceedingly con- 

 cise. 



In addition to being a Fellow of the Royal Society and of 

 the Geological Societies of London and Paris, he was a member 



