PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 471 
appeared to have a restricted geographical range have now been found over 
a much wider area ; but while this progress has been made, numerous ques- 
tions have arisen as to the changing connections of certain lands and seas 
which previously seemed to have been almost settled. The outlook both of 
zoology and of geology has, therefore, been immensely widened, but the only 
real contribution to philosophy has been one of generalities. Some of the 
broad principles to which I have referred are now so clearly established 
that we can often predict what will be the main result of any given explora- 
tion, should it be successful in recovering skeletons. We are no longer bold 
enough to restore an entirely unknown extinct animal from a single bone 
or tooth, like the trustful Cuvierian school; but there are many kinds of 
bones and teeth of which we can determine the approximate geological age 
and probable associates, even if we have no exact knowledge of the animals 
to which they belong. A subject which began by providing material for 
wonder-books has thus been reduced to a science sufficiently precise to be 
of fundamental importance both to zoology and to geology ; and its exacti- 
tude must necessarily increase with greater and greater rapidity as our 
systematic researches are more clearly guided by the experience we have 
already gained. 
The following Papers were then read :— 
1. The Geology of Western Canada. By J. B. Tyrreny, M.A. 
Beginning at the Archean granites and gneisses which outcrop about 
forty miles east of the City of Winnipeg, and, proceeding westward, flat- 
lying sandstones of Chazy age from 20 to 100 feet in thickness are first 
met with, overlying which are about 300 feet of Trenton limestones, in 
many places rich in fossils. The limestone so commonly used in the City of 
Winnipeg is from one of the higher beds in this formation. 
These limestones are conformably overlain by reddish shaly beds, also 
rich in fossiis, which here form the summit of the Ordovician series. These 
are well shown at Stony Mountain, a few miles north-west of this city. 
Overlying these are about 100 feet of porous and cavernous dolomites, 
particularly interesting to the people of- Winnipeg, as they are the rocks 
which carry the artesian water for the city from its high collecting ground 
between Lakes Winnipeg and Manitoba to the wells, from which it is 
pumped for the use of the citizens. 
These rocks are shown in the quarry at Stonewall, but fossils are not 
at all common in it. 
Overlying the Silurian dolomites are from 300 to 400 feet of shales, 
dolomites, and limestones of Devonian age. 
All these beds, from the base of the Ordovician to the top of the 
Devonian, are conformable, and represent a continuous sedimentation, there 
being no break whatever in the series. It is not improbable that the series 
may even run up into the Carboniferous, but, if so, the higher Paleozoic 
rocks are now buried under later sediments. 
After Devonian, or perhaps Carboniferous, times a period of erosion 
commenced, and continued until well on into the Cretaceous age, when the 
whole country from the edge of the Archean westward was depressed 
beneath the ocean, and sandstones, and afterwards clays and calcareous 
shales, were deposited on its floor. These beds have been named in 
ascending order Dakota, Benton, -Niobrara, Pierre (subdivided into 
Millwood and Odanah series, with the Belly River sandstones dividing it 
in the west), and Laranic. 
The latter seems to be a transition series between the Cretaceous and 
Eocene, but it has heen subdivided into a lower (Edmonton) formation 
