Dr. J. F. WMteaves, F.G.S., F.B.S. (Canada). 435 



operations in the Gulf of St. Lawrence on behalf of the Montreal 

 Society in 1867 and 1869, and under the direct auspices of the 

 Department of Marine and Fisheries at Ottawa, which provided 

 special facilities for this work, on Government vessels, during the 

 years 1871, 1872, and 1873. In aid of this work Dr. J. Gwyn Jeffreys 

 presented him in 1868 with a dredge of the most approved pattern. 

 On an ordinary Gaspe fishing-boat it had been scarcely practicable 

 to dredge at much greater depths than 50 or 60 fathoms, but on one 

 or other of the fishery protection cruisers the greatest depths in the 

 Gulf, from 200 and 250 to 313 fathoms, were for the first time 

 successfully explored. 



Sir J. W. Dawson has shown that the Pleistocene deposits of the 

 St. Lawrence valley consist largely of a thin upper layer of sand, 

 the ' Saxicava sand,' which is characterized by the abundance of 

 a few common species of littoral marine shells and barnacles 

 belonging to species still living ; and of a lower and thicker deposit 

 of clay, the ' Leda clay,' which holds the remains of a rich marine 

 fauna of a distinctly deeper water type. The dredgings in the 

 Eiver and Gulf of St. Lawrence by Sir J. W. Dawson, Dr. Whiteaves, 

 and others have so far shown that nearly all the species that have 

 been found fossil in the Leda clay are still living in its waters, or 

 in the North Atlantic. The principal exceptions seem to be the 

 Xepralia quadricornuta of Dawson and the Astarte Laurentiana of 

 Lyell, neither of which has yet been met with in a living state. 

 Tethea Logani, Dawson (a tetractinellid sponge), was long supposed 

 to be an extinct species, but Mr. L. M. Lambe thinks that it is the 

 same as the recent Craniella cranium (Muller). The Choristes elegans 

 of Carpenter, which was also once supposed to be an extinct species, 

 has been dredged living by Verrill in deep water off the New 

 England coast. The so-called Leda of the ' Leda clay,' now called 

 Portlandia glacialis (Wood), has not yet been found living in the 

 Eiver or Gulf of St. Lawrence, though Mr. A. P. Low dredged 

 a few fine living specimens of it at Eichmond Gulf, on the east side 

 of Hudson Bay, in from fifteen to twenty-five fathoms, in 1899. 

 In this connection it may be mentioned that Dr. Whiteaves 

 materially assisted in the preparation of the lists of Pleistocene 

 fossils in the " Geology of Canada," published by the Geological 

 Survey in 1863, and in the " Canadian Ice Age," published by Sir 

 J. W. Dawson in 1893. 



In 1875 Dr. Whiteaves joined the palEeontological branch of the 

 Geological Survey of Canada at the request of E. Billings, who was 

 then in failing health. He was appointed Paleeontologist to that 

 institution in the autumn of 1876, shortly after the decease of 

 Mr. Billings in June of that year, and was made one of the original 

 Assistant Directors in 1877, and Zoologist in 1883.^ During the 



^ The Assistant Directors were originally four in number, viz., Dr. Eobert Bell, 

 now Ctiief Geologist also ; Dr. G. M. Dawson, who died in 1901 ; Dr. B. J. 

 Harrington, who resigned in 1881 ; and Dr. Whiteaves. Drs. Bell and Dawson 

 represented Field Geology ; Dr. HaiTington, Mineralogy and Chemistry ; and 

 Dr. Whiteaves, PalaDontology. Dr. G. C. Hoffmann and Professor Macoun were 

 since appointed assistant directors, the former in 18S3, the latter in 1887. 



