194 Eminent Living Geologists — Dr. G. M. Daivson, F.R.8. 



British Columbia and Peace River (1879), and the Yukon district 

 (1887). Our present knowledge of the geology of these districts 

 is largely from the observations carried out by Dawson and 

 published in the voluminous Annual Eeports of the Survey. Even 

 in British Columbia, apart from the preliminary reconnaissance of 

 Dr. Selwyn in 1871 and the work of the late Mr. J. Richardson on 

 the Cretaceous strata of the coast areas, we are almost entirely 

 indebted to Dr. Dawson for establishing the taxonomic relations of 

 the rocks. 



On the great plains of the North-West, Dr. Dawson has investi- 

 gated more particularly the relations of the Cretaceous and the 

 Laramie formations ; and he has discovered the presence in the 

 first-named formation in Southern Alberta of an important series 

 of fresh- water rocks, the Belly-river group, which has not been 

 noticed in the section of the Cretaceous worked out by Meek and 

 Hayden on the Upper Missouri. In the adjacent Rocky Mountain 

 region, another distinct group, the Kootanie, has been likewise 

 recognized by Dr. Dawson as representing a period in the early 

 Cretaceous. 



Amongst the more ancient rocks of Canada, Dr. Dawson has 

 ascertained that a great part of the Huronian formation in the Lake 

 of the Woods district is composed of metamorphosed volcanic rocks. 

 In British Columbia also, after a detailed examination of over 6,000 

 square miles of the interior plateau region, he has made known 

 the existence of a thick series of mica schists and gneisses of 

 presumed Archsean age, which are succeeded by Cambrian, Ordovician, 

 Silurian, and Carboniferous strata. In the Cordilleran region 

 of this province, he has further noted the occurrence of great 

 deposits of contemporaneous volcanic rocks, in various stages of 

 metamorphisra. 



At the other end of the geological scale Dr. Dawson has largely 

 contributed to our knowledge of the glacial phenomena which in 

 Canada are so strikingly developed. He was the first to describe 

 the glacial origin of the Missouri Couteau ; and in the interior plateau 

 of British Columbia he has shown that at one period of the Ice Age, 

 there was a confluent ice-mass the surface of which stood at a level 

 of 7,000 feet abovp the sea, and that it must have been at least from 

 2,000 to 3,000 feet in thickness. He has further established the 

 fact that the movements of the glacier ice in this region were 

 not only to the south and south-east, and through the transverse 

 valley and gaps of the coast-ranges to the ocean, but that it had 

 also a northerly flow, and passed down the valleys of the Pelly 

 and Lewes branches of the Yukon river. 



With regard to the glaciation of the northern part of the Great 

 Plains, Dr. Dawson maintains that the region, as a whole, has been 

 submerged, and that floating ice has been the main agent in its 

 glaciation, a view which is not in accord with that of the majority 

 of American geologists. 



Besides in the Canadian Survey Reports, Dr. Dawson's observa- 

 tions on this and other branches of geulogy, have appeared in the 



