4 J. W. DAWSON ON SOME RELATIONS OP 



and beds of liguite, aud which, iu character aud geological horizon, may b3 held to repre- 

 sent the Dakota group or the Lower Belly River group of the West. 



The opinions of geologists in England, with reference to the vexed question of the 

 glacial drift, are, I think, gradually diverging from the extreme glacialist views, recently 

 current, to a position of greater moderation. The great submergence of the later Pleisto- 

 cene, evidenced by the occurrence of marine shells and sea beaches at high levels, has 

 forced itself on the attention of geologists in Great Britain, as it has long since done in 

 Canada, and has produced the general conviction that much of the transport of boulders 

 and drift has been due to the agency of floating ice. My friend, Mr. Milne Home, who has 

 for some time been the chairman of the boulder committee of Scotland, informs me that 

 the careful mapping and study of these travelled masses has thrown much new light on 

 their directions and mode of conveyance, and that a conference between the English and 

 Scottish committees is to be held, and will probably still farther aid iu the elucidation of 

 these points. It would seem that a similar committee, or series of committees, might be 

 profitably employed in recording the statistics of Canadian travelled boulders, and much 

 preliminai-y information might be compiled from the reports of the Greological Survey and 

 the papers published in scientific periodicals. 



"When in the East, I had an opportunity of satisfying myself as to the occurrence of a 

 great Pleistocene submergence iu the Mediterranean regions, parallel to that in Northern 

 Europe and America, and succeeded in like manner by a continental period, — a fact very 

 important with reference to the later geological history and physical geography of the old 

 continent. The details of these observations will appear in the Loudon Geological 

 Magazine. 



The subject of prehistoric man is at present one of intense interest, aud is pursued both 

 by geologists aud archœologists. In Canada we are familiar with the fact that oui 

 modern aborigines afford, iu their manners and implements and weapons, much materiar 

 for explaining the traces of prehistoric men iu older countries. Dr. Daniel Wilson has 

 most ably illustrated this in his admirable volumes on "Prehistoric Man," and I have 

 myself endeavoured to direct attention to it in my little work entitled " Fossil Men and their 

 Representatives" ; while by a singular coincidence, M. Quatrefages has adopted almost the 

 same title, " L'Homme fossile et l'Homme sauA'age," for his recent valuable work on this 

 subject. The admirable collections now accumulated in public museums, and especially 

 those at St. Germains and at Brussels, and in the British Museum, with such private 

 collections as those of Mr. John Evans and Prof. Boyd Dawkius, bring very clearly before 

 the mind of a Canadian student, the striking resemblance between the arts of the perished 

 peoples of j)rimeval Europe and those so lately universal in the American continent. The 

 Smithsoniau Institution, at Washington, has rightly appreciated the importance of collecting 

 extensively aud preserving for future reference the monuments of the Stone Age of 

 America. Our efforts in this direction have as yet been comparatively feeble, but it is to 

 be hoped that they will be greatly extended in the time to come. 



Some of the most interesting remains of prehistoric man iu the world are those of the 

 Lebanon range ; both because of the abundance and richness of the cavern deposits of that 

 region, and the fact that some of these antedate the old Phenician colonization of the 

 coast of Syria. When at Beyrût I had the opportunity of making collections in some of 

 the most interesting caverns of the region, and obtained evidence, which I have given in a 



