[parks] presidential ADDRESS 7 



toulin island to the coast were examined in greater or less detail and 

 assigned to a place in the stratigraphie column. 



Logan at the very beginning of his work felt the great necessity 

 for palaeontological assistance and appealed to de la Beche for help: 

 this was readily accorded, with the result that the names of Owen, 

 Salter, Jones and other British palaeontologists appear in the records 

 of the Survey. In 1844 Logan visited Hall and Emmons at Albany 

 and felt, in consequence, a still greater desire for the services of a 

 palaeontologist, but this desire was not satisfied until 1856 when 

 Elkanah Billings was added to the staff of the Survey as palaeon- 

 tologist. 



Billings was our first palaeontologist and he has every right to 

 be regarded as the father of this branch of the science in Canada. 

 During his period of service, until his death in 1876, he published 

 about one hundred and seventy separate papers, ninety-three of 

 which appeared in the Canadian Naturalist and Geologist which he 

 himself founded in 1856. Billings is credited with the description of 

 sixty-one genera and one thousand a:nd sixty-five species of Canadian 

 Palaeozoic fossils; he did much to unravel the complicated strati- 

 graphy of the Quebec group, and came to the support of Emmons 

 with regard to the Taconic Controversy. 



It is now necessary to review briefly the advances made by geo- 

 logists outside the Geological Survey of Canada during this period 

 of thirty years, 1840-1870. The name of Sir Wm. Dawson is of out- 

 standing importance and must stand side by side with that of Logan. 

 Dawson, then a young man of 23 years, was working on geological 

 problems in Nova Scotia when Logan began his first survey and he 

 was with Lyell when that distinguished geologist made a trip through 

 the province in 1842. In 1855 Dawson was made Principal and 

 Professor of Geology at McGill. Of his services to that institution 

 and to education in general it is unnecessary to speak. His contri- 

 butions to science were many and varied: prior to 1870 alone he 

 produced about two hundred separate articles. Acadian strati- 

 graphic geology owes much to his efforts as the three editions of 

 "Acadian Geology" attest. Dawson is perhaps best known for the 

 monumental work on Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous plants, 

 and for his discovery of amphibians in the Palaeozoic Together 

 with that of Logan his name will always be associated with the pseudo- 

 organism Eazoon canadense, which name was given by Dawson in 1864. 



Besides his actual contributions Dawson did much for geology 

 in Canada by his close association with the distinguished workers in 



