SECTION IV., 1902 [183 ] Trans. R. S. C. 
XII.— George Mercer Dawson. 
By B. J. HARRINGTON. 
(Read May 26, 1902.) 
Twenty years have elapsed since the inauguration of the Royal 
Society of Canada, and in that time many of those who were wont to 
gather with us have been called to the majority. Sir William Dawson, 
our first President, died in 1899, ripe in knowledge and in years, but 
no one then thought that he would so soon be followed by his distin- 
guished son, Dr. G. M. Dawson. To the latter, years of usefulness and 
honour seemed to remain; but how little do we know of what lies be- 
fore us! Life is ever uncertain, and Dr. Dawson realized this when 
he wrote: 
“Life is a bubble on the sea, 
The ocean of eternity; 
It floats awhile in glittering pride, 
It may o’er many billows ride. 
There comes a moment, none knows why, 
No cloud o’erspreads the summer sky, 
Some little breath, some hidden thing, 
Perhaps a spirit on the wing, 
Touches the orb—it melts away, 
The sea receives its little spray; — 
No mark, no memory left behind. 
The everlasting sea, the wind — flow on.” 
Dr. Dawson was the second son of the late Sir J. W. Dawson, and 
was born on the Ist of August, 1849, in Pictou, Nova Scotia. In 1855 
his father, who had for some years been acting as Superintendent of 
Education for Nova Scotia, received the appointment of Principal of 
McGill University, Montreal, and with his family took up his residence 
there. Instead of the magnificent structures of to-day, there were 
then on the college grounds only two “unfinished and partly ruinous 
buildings, standing amid a wilderness of excavators’ and masons’ rub- 
bish, overgrown with weeds and bushes. The grounds were unfenced 
and pastured at will by herds of cattle, which not only cropped the 
grass, but browsed on the shrubs, leaving unhurt only one great elm, 
which still stands as the ‘ founder’s tree,’ and a few old oaks and but- 
ternut trees’. Surroundings of this kind were not ideal from a uni- 
versity point of view, but made an instructive environment for an in- 
telligent boy. The numerous wild flowers, the birds’ nests, the fossil 

1 Fifty Years of Work in Canada — Autobiographical Notes by Sir Wil- 
liam Dawson, p. 98. 
