A SIR J. W. DAWSON ON SOME POINTS IN WHICH AMERICAN 
to these facts, though as early as 1852 they had attracted the attention of the great Bohe- 
mian paleontologist, Barrande. Any one who studies the magnificent volumes of Hall, or 
the earlier editions of Dana’s manual, will see that, until Hartt’s discoveries were made, 
the view of American geologists scarcely extended lower in the Paleozoic than the Pots- 
dam sandstone. The work so well begun by Hartt has been followed up by Matthew, 
and we have, in the last volume of our Transactions, a memoir in which many new forms 
are added to this ancient fauna, and we hope at our present meeting to have for the first 
time a subdivision of its fossils according to age, parallel to that ascertained in Western 
Europe. Ina paper to be read at the present meeting, Mr. Matthew is able to tabulate 
sixty-five species and twenty-one varietal forms, from the lowest division of the Acadian 
group, corresponding to the earlier Cambrian of Europe. 
A curious accident has recently happened in connection with Hartt’s collections. 
These remained after his death in the United States, and were offered for sale, and should 
have been acquired for our Canadian collections. The fossil plants I purchased at my 
own expense for the McGill College collection, but the primordial fossils I had not means 
to redeem, and the Survey was at the time equally impecunious. They remained conse- 
quently in Cornell University, and Hartt’s types, which Mr. Matthew should have had as 
the basis of his work, have been republished as a Bulletin of the United States Geological 
Survey, illustrated in a far more sumptuous manner than I was able to afford in my 
“ Acadian Geology,” and there can be little doubt that the effect will be that abroad an 
officer of that Survey will practically receive the credit which should belong to Canadians, 
though he has done little if anything to advance the knowledge of the subject beyond 
the point where Hartt left it. Prof. Bailey, who has been following up the stratigraphy 
of these rocks as ably as the fossils have been worked by Matthew, has directed my 
attention to the fact that in a recent, somewhat pretentious volume issued in Cambridge, 
the work of Canadian geologists in these rocks is sneered at, and that by unfair citations 
of statements made at different times and during the progress of discovery, we are made to 
appear as at variance with one another. On this subject I would say that, in my own 
connection with the geology of the Maritime Provinces, I have ever endeavoured to pro- 
mote the work of my younger geological friends; have at once admitted any new dis- 
covery, even when contradicting the conclusions I had formed from a less complete induc- 
tion of facts; and that the work of Hartt, Matthew and Bailey in the complicated and 
disturbed coast rocks of southern New Brunswick has produced results in stratigraphy and 
palzeontology more accurate, complete and important in the interests of science, than any 
that can be shown with reference to the continuation of these same rocks in New England. 
If the holding of different opinions on debatable points, and the free and active dis- 
cussion of these opinions is to be a ground of accusation against Canadian geologists, I 
fear the next great group of rocks, that Siluro-Cainbrian series to which Logan gave 
the name “Quebec Group,” may afford more ground of complaint. It would be useless 
here to attempt to summarize the discussions in which Hall, Emmons, Dana, and many 
other American geologists have taken part, or the bold and masterly way in which Logan 
and Billings cut the Gordian knot, or the subsequent discussions of Hunt, Selwyn and Mac- 
farlane. I have elsewhere noticed these subjects, and hope to do so again before long. I 
may content myself with quoting a general statement on the subject, made in 1879, and 
still I think correct. 
