JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 87 
may prove a very difficult matter indeed to distinguish berg 
from marks made by a glacier travelling landward. In Nova 
Scotia and the lower province you may remark in places mate- 
rial apparently deposited by the former, and Sir A. Geikie 
expressly states that erratic blocks were chiefly transported by 
the great ice sheet. They were partly also by floating ice du- 
ring the rise of the land. 
With regard to the Jewish or Babylonian account of the 
universal Noachian deluge, you may perceive from Sir Wil- 
lam’s numerous publications that he believed in the occur- 
rence. We must admit the belief was generally entertained 
by his early contemporaries also. The writer imagines you 
cannot to-day find a single prominent geologist in the world 
willing to admit that any such catastrophe as is recorded 
has ever taken place. Perhaps we may discover in this 
instance, or in others, an explanation of the attitude taken by 
the eminent Canadian in the following extract from the brief 
biological sketch of the life of Sir William Dawson by his 
friend Dr. Ami of the Dominion Geological survey : ‘‘ Sir Wil- 
liam was a devoutly religious man. His private as wellas his 
public life bore testimony to his inward faith. He sought to 
apply the scientific method in the interpretation of many 
otherwise obscure passages of Holy Writ, and by his numerous 
writings on this subject certainly drew attention to many 
points of world-wide interest.’’ Doubtlessly he wished, like 
Dana, to reconcile geology and Genesis ; whether he succeeded 
in doing so may be questioned, but one thing is certain, he 
honestly believed in the correctness of his views, and assuredly 
ranks far above what the ex-President of Cornell University 
calls ‘‘ The men who since their youth have learned nothing 
and forgotten nothing, unthinking persons of little or no im- 
portance save in making up a retrograde majority in an eccle- 
siastical tribunal.’’ 
Some of the most important discoveries are so recent that 
necessarily they must have been unknown, while others were 
possibly overlooked by Sir W. Dawson when he stated, “‘ for 
the present therefore, man is geologically a post glacial species.”’ 
