Scientific Lectures. 69 



SCIEXTIFIC LECTURE-V. 



ON THE PRIMEVAL FLORA. 



By J. W. Dawsox, Pren'oipal op McGill College, Montreal. 



The fifth lecture of the course of scientific lectures before the 

 American Institute, was delivered by Principal Dawson, of the McGill 

 College of Montreal, last evening, and was illustrated by a series of 

 charts representing the vegetation in the periods of the earth's 

 history before the creation of man, as revealed by their fossil remains. 



Principal Dawson said : An eminent authority has defined geolo- 

 gists to be a class of amiable and harmless enthusiasts, who are 

 happy and grateful if you will only consent to give them an unlimited 

 quantity of that which, to others, is perhaps the least valuable of all 

 things, namely, past time. I confess to this definition of geologists, 

 so far as my subject this evening is concerned, for I shall have to 

 make a large demand upon your faith as to the extent of the past 

 time, and shall have to ask you to give me all of it which you reason- 

 ably and conscientiously may. Geology, indeed, works strange 

 revolutions in our view of things new and old. The primitive forests, 

 and even the gray rocks and hills themselves are things not primitive 

 and unchanging, but things, comparatively of yesterday, the succes- 

 sors of olden forests and olden rocks that in dim and ghost-like 

 procession recede from our view into the past of antiquity, comjjarad 

 with which all human antiquities are things of yesterday. " The 

 murmuring pines, and the hemlock, bearded with moss and in 

 garments green, indistinct in the twilight," may " stand Hke Druids 

 of old with voices sad and prophetic," but they belong not to the 

 forest primeval of the earth's younger days, though they may point 

 backward to perished predecessors of truly old date, truly primitive 

 and geological antiquity. It is to them that I must try to carry you 

 back in imagination this evening, to awaken those slumbering ages 

 and make them green again in your eyes and vocal in your ears. 

 Transferring our thoughts to these old forests, and imagining tlieir 



