A PAPER—BY WM. GOSSIP. 159 
Pictou, a position now filled by his son, “On the characteristic 
Fossils of different Coal Seams in Nova Scotia.” By J. Matthew 
Jones, F. L. S., “ Ichthyological Contributions.” By Abraham 
Gesner, M. D., a well known geologist, “On the Gold Fields of 
Nova Scotia.” He was followed by Robert Haliburton, a gen- 
tleman almost as well known to science in Canada as in Nova 
Scotia, with an able scientific paper on ethnology, or perhaps, as 
more appropriately styled by himself—* ethology,” in which he 
appears to have re-discovered a long hidden and crude system 
of astronomy, which was known before a knowledge of the solar 
system, or had derived its origin independent of it, and when 
the human mind could yet scarcely comprehend the principles 
by which it was governed. However that may be, Mr. Halibur- 
ton pointed out that the influence of the pleiades was coeval in 
the minds of many branches of the human family, and that 
religious observances among the most ancient of the tribes of 
mankind, depended upon their rising and culmination. Of these 
religious observances, relics still remain which seem to be inef- 
faceable, for instance—the Festival of the Dead. All Souls, All 
Saints, Halloween, the Mormodellick of the Australian savages, 
and other far fetched heathen festivals, all occurring at or near 
the same time of the year. This paper of Mr. Haliburton’s, 
which I commend to the careful perusal of every member of 
the Society interested in the subject, commanded much attention 
from learned men, and was I believe mainly instrumental in 
’ making our Institute better known abroad. I am not sure that 
it may not form one of the best arguments of a certain school 
of ethnologists, on behalf of the plurality of the human creation, 
on which a great deal has been already said, and a great deal 
more remains to be said and written. Or that it may not point 
to the original site of the human family so imperfectly described 
in the Hebrew Scriptures, which had been utterly destroyed by 
a flood, but which may have had colonies far from the scene of 
destruction of which there are only a few remnants at the present 
day to attest to a very early intellectual progress and civiliza- 
tion. 
There is no necessity, however, that we should indulge in such 
