1865.] NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 301 



deposited. As treated by Dr. Hunt, mineral springs cease to be 

 merely objects of curiosity or for medicinal use, but acquire great 

 geological interest, as indications of conditions of the ocean which 

 have long since passed away, but which may have had an impor- 

 tant influence on animal life and mineral accumulation in the 

 paleozoic period ; and also as illustrations of the causes of chemical 

 change now in action in the crust of the earth. 



The remarkable discovery by Mr. Billings of locomotive organs 

 probably of the nature of swimming feet, in Asajjhusjricttycejrfialus, 

 read before the Society, but not yet published, deserves to be 

 reckoned as one of the most important facts developed in connection 

 with Canadian Geology in the past year. As an addition to this 

 discovery, I may place the view which I presented to this Society, 

 in a paper on the fossils known as Rusophycus, that these are ia 

 reality casts of burrows of trilobites, and entitled to the name 

 Rusichuites. 



In my address of last year I dwelt at some length on the 

 question of the mode of formation of the boulder clay, and on the 

 alleged action of glaciers in the post-pliocene period ; and stated 

 my reasons for the belief that floating ice was the agent in the 

 striation of rock surfaces, and the transport of boulders in Canada • 

 and that our lake basins had been eroded by the slow action of 

 cold ocean currents. I have since followed up this subject, and in 

 a paper on the post-pliocene deposits of Riviere du Loup, have 

 endeavored to show the true marine character of the boulder clay 

 of that locality, so rich in fossil shells of the post-tertiary period, 

 I have also obtained facts which prove conclusively that the 

 boulder clay of Montreal and its vicinity could not possibly have 

 been sub-aerial, and that throughout Eastern Canada this deposit 

 does not form a continuous sheet, but rather a series of old sea 

 margins extending from an elevation of two or three hundred feet 

 above the sea to the present sea level, and in time from the 

 newer Pliocene period to the present day. 



Lastly, under the head of Geology, but passing from the latest 

 formations to the far distant dawn of organic life on our planet, 

 our last number contains the re-publication of papers by Sir W. 

 Logan, Dr. Carpenter, Dr. Hunt, and myself, on Euzbon Cana- 

 dense, shewing that the views which I illustrated here a year ago, 

 of the character of that remarkable fossil, have been fully confirmed 

 by the greatest living authority on the group of animals to which 

 the specimens were assigned, and that this great discovery has 



