138 Revleics — J. F. Whiteaves — Presidential Address. 



with the Coal on Vancouver Island, and concluded upon palason- 

 tological evidence that tliey were Cretaceous. In the following 

 year, Dr. B. F. Shumard (Trans. St. Louis Academy of Sciences) 

 described some fossils from the Cretaceous rocks of the Nanaimo 

 Eiver. He was followed, in 1859, by Prof. Leo Lesquereux, 

 who, in the 27th volume of the American Journal of Science 

 and Art, described some fossil plants fi'om the same rocks 

 belonging to the genera Popuhis, Qnerciis, and Cinnamomum, which, 

 however, he regarded as of Miocene age. Captain Palliser's ex- 

 plorations in British North America were fruitful in palgeontological 

 results, worked out by Dr. (now Sir James) Hector. In the same 

 year (1859) fossils collected in the country between Lake Superior 

 and the Red River Settlement, and between the latter and the 

 Assiniboine and Saskatchewan rivers, were sent to Mr. E. Billings, 

 then palajontologist to the Geological Survey of Canada, who found 

 that the specimens supplied "almost indisputable evidence that a 

 considerable part of the tei-ritory belongs to the Cretaceous period, 

 or the great Chalk formation so largely developed in the Old World." 

 In 1861 Dr. Hector, in a paper on the geology of the country 

 between Lake Superior and the Pacific Ocean (Palliser's Expedition, 

 1857-60), compared the Cretaceous rocks east of the Rocky 

 Mountains with those of Vancouver Island, and published an ideal 

 vertical section of the Cretaceous system in British North America, 

 which agrees in part with Meek and Hayden's Upper Missouri 

 section. Lists of the Cretaceous fossils were contributed by Mr. 

 Etheridge; but most of the fossils were only determined generically. 

 Nineteen species were recorded, all marine mollusca. Eleven of 

 these were from vai'ious localities now called Manitoba and the 

 districts of Assiniboia, Saskatchewan and Alberta, and eight from 

 Nanaimo, Comox or Valdez Inlet. No less than thirteen of the 

 species are identified with Texan or Mexican species. Again, 

 in 1861, Meek described the following Cretaceous fossils from 

 Vancouver and Sucia Islands, viz. : Dosinia tenuis, from Nanaimo ; 

 Inoceramus subundatus, Baculites occidentalis. Ammonites Vancon- 

 verensis and Nautilus Campbelli, from Comox ; Ammonites complexus, 

 var. Suciensis, from Comox and the Sucia Islands ; and Baculites 

 inornatus from the Sucia Islands. A few plants were described in 

 1863 by Dr. Newberry (Boston Journ. Nat. Hist. vol. vii.), viz. 

 Aspidium Kennerlyi and Taxodium cuneatum, from Nanaimo ; also 

 Populus rhomboidea of Lesquereux and a Sabal, afterwards described 

 by Sir J. W. Dawson under the name of Sabal imperialis (Trans. 

 Royal Soc. Canada, sec. 1). The first volume of the Palaeontology 

 of California (1864) contains descriptions, by W. M. Gabb, of two 

 new species from Nanaimo, viz. Hamites Vancouver ensis and Pecten 

 Traskii. Since the confederation of the provinces of Canada in 

 1867, much work has been done upon the Cretaceous rocks of 

 Manitoba and the North -West Territories and in the Rocky 

 Mountains and British Columbia by Sir J. W. Dawson, Doctors 

 Selwyn, G. M. Dawson, R. Bell, and J. W. Spencer, and by Messrs. 

 J. Richardson, R. G. McConnell, and J. B. Tyrrell. In summarizing 



