SIR WILLIAM DAWSON 729 
therefore not strictly like, still suggests the probability of the 
Stigmaria having grown in slush in like manner.’’ And in another 
part of the same letter, referring to the now celebrated Joggins 
section on the coast of Nova Scotia, he says: ‘‘Dawson and 
I set to work and measured, foot by foot, many hundred yards of 
the cliffs, where forests of erect trees and calamites most 
abound. It was hard work, as the wind one day was stormy and 
we had to look sharp lest the rocking of living trees, just ready 
to fall from the top of the undermined cliff, should cause some 
of the old fossil ones to come down upon us by the run. But I 
never enjoyed the reading of a marvelous chapter of the big 
volume more. We missed a botanical aid-de-camp much when 
we came to the tops and bottoms of calamites and all sorts of 
strange pranks which some of the compressed trees played.” 
About this time the governing body of McGill College at 
Montreal was looking about for some one fitted to assume the 
principalship of the institution and to reorganize it. 
The college, fotnded by Royal Charter in 1821, had made 
but slow progress in its earlier years, and was at this time, 
through litigation and other causes, almost in a state of collapse. 
Sir William, then Mr. Dawson, was pointed out to the Governors 
of the College by Sir Edmund Head, then Governor General of 
Canada, as a man who, if his services could be secured, was 
eminently fitted to undertake the task of reconstructing the uni- 
versity. In the meantime, ignorant of all this, he was prose- 
cuting a candidature for the chair of Natural History in his alma 
mater, the University of Edinburgh, rendered vacant by the 
death of Professor Edward Forbes, and in which he was strongly 
supported by the leading geologists of the time. By a strange 
coincidence, just as he was about to leave Halifax for England in 
connection with this candidature, intelligence arrived that the 
Edinburgh chair had been filled at an earlier date than his 
friends had anticipated, and at the same time a letter was 
received offering him the principalship of McGill. 
The services of Dr. Dawson were accordingly secured, and in 
1855 he assumed the principalship of McGill College, stipulating 
