No. 8.) NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 449 



Commission. On this occasion, as a private enterprise of his 

 own, lie issued circulars and blank forms to a great number 

 of persons in the North- West, inviting replies, numbers of 

 which were sent in from year to year. The result was the 

 publication in our Journal of a series of papers which it is 

 scarcely too much to say reach to all that is certainly known as 

 to the locust plague and its remedies, and may probably be found 

 in the sequel as important as the expensively obtained statistics 

 now being collected by the United States Commission. I may 

 add that not only have these reports been published in our Jour- 

 nal, but a large number of extra copies have been circulated 

 throughout the West, without any expense to the country. 



Mr. Caulfield's paper was an elaborate investigation of a 

 plague which has reached nearer to ourselves. This paper has 

 been published in one of our city newspapers, but deserves a 

 much wider circulation. The time was when this Society was 

 the subject of jeux d'esprit in the city press on the subject of 

 " bug-hunting." but the Colorado beetle has vindicated the 

 claims of the bugs to some degree of respect. 



Of the geological papers, the following deserve especial men- 

 tion : — the communication of Mr. Selwyn on the calcareous 

 pipe found at Three Rivers in Post-Pliocene clays, and referred 

 to the action of a hot spring penetrating those clays in Post- 

 Pliocene times. That of Prof. Hind, in which he sought to 

 illustrate the effects of Arctic ice in producing ocean currents. 

 That of Mr. Whiteaves on new Jurassic fossils from British 

 Columbia, in which the evidence for the existence of Jurassic 

 rocks in that country ; s for the first time fully discussed. That 

 of Dr. G. M. Dawson on the Surface Geology of the Pacific slope 

 of the Rocky Mountains. That of Dr. Harrington on the micro- 

 scopic structure of igneous dykes traversing the Laurentian rocks, 

 one of our first Canadian contributions to Microscopic Petrology. 

 I piss over several minor contributions, and also papers of my 

 own on fossils from different formations, and on the Earthquake 

 of November 10th, 1877. 



On the whole our Session may be said to have been a fruitful 

 and agreeable one, and I feel confident that the members who 

 have attended our meetings and have looked into our published 

 proceedings, have derived both instruction and recreation from 

 our work. I cannot however refrain from expressing regret that 

 our meetings have not been more largely attended, and that so 



