[HARRINGTON ] GEORGE MERCER DAWSON 187 
manded the attention and confidence of mining capitalists, mine mana- 
gers and others interested in the development of the mineral resources 
of the country. When in the field, geology was, of course, the princi- 
pal object of his investigations, but his wide knowledge of collateral 
sciences enabled him not merely to collect objects of natural history in 
an intelligent and discriminating way, and to discuss the flora and 
faunas of different districts, but also to make important observations 
on the habits and languages of Indian tribes, to keep continuous mete- 
orological records and to determine latitudes and longitudes. We 
accordingly find that his reports generally conclude with a series of 
most valuable appendices, giving special information which could not 
well be included in the body jof the document. 
In an elaborate notice of his report on the Queen Charlotte Islands, 
published in Petermann’s Mittheilungen (Vol. 27, 1881), the writer, 
after calling attention to the fact that the report dealt not merely with 
the geology of the islands, but also with their topography, natural his- 
tory, climate and ethnology, says: “One is amazed at the rich results 
which he brought back in all these branches, especially as he had only 
one assistant, Mr. Rankine Dawson, and remained in the islands only 
two and a half months, from the 12th of June to the end of August, 
and that in most unfavourably wet weather.” 
In addition to his field books proper, he kept copious journals 
which contain much interesting information. He had a habit too, of 
jotting down notes and sometimes verses on scraps of paper or on the 
backs of telegraph forms. In the wilds of British Columbia, for exam- 
ple, he writes: 
“Contorted beds, of unknown age, 
My weary limbs shall bear, 
Perhaps a neat synclinal fold 
At night shall be my lair. 
Dips I shall take on unnamed streams, 
Or where the rocks strike, follow 
Along the crested mountain ridge 
Or anticlinal hollow; 
Or gently with the hammer stroke 
The slumbering petrifaction, 
That for a hundred million years 
Has been debarred from action. 
We can fancy him, too, sitting by his lonely camp fire on the 
shorcs of the Pacific and penning the following .ines: 
“To rest on fragrant cedar boughs 
Close by the western ocean’s rim, 
While in the tops of giant pines 
The live-long night the sea-winds hymn, 
And low upon the fretted shore 
The waves beat out the evermore.” 
