THE president's ADDRESS. 87 



for the purpose of the survey. At the end of these five years, the 

 act was renewed for a like period. In 1856, the sum theretofore 

 appropriated having (as another act, passed in that year, declared,) 

 been found insufficient to carry out the survey in an efiectual 

 manner, and it being deemed by Parliament to be desirable that 

 such an increase should be made to the establishment as would 

 hasten the completion of the undertaking and enlarge its useful- 

 ness, the annual appropriation was raised to $20,000, and was con- 

 tinued for five years more. In 1864, annual grants of varying 

 amounts having been made during the three intervening years. Sir 

 William Logan represented to the G-overnment of the day the ad- 

 vantages that would result from being saved the necessity of making 

 an annual appeal to Parliament ; and I had, with other members of 

 the Opposition, the pleasure, in the last session of my parliamentary 

 life, of supporting a vote, recommended by the Government, of 

 $20,000 a year for a further period of five years from the 1st of 

 January 1864. 



Besides the direct and obvious practical advantages which this 

 survey has yielded to the Province, it has done much to make the 

 name of Canada familiar to men of science in Europe ; and it has 

 also served to advance geological science itself. Not to multiply 

 the evidences of this, with which many of you are so familiar, I 

 venture to read here the reference to the subject which was made 

 by Sir Charles Lyell, the President of the British Association for 

 the advancement of science, at the last meeting of that learned body. 



Sir Charles refers to two points on which a gradual change of 

 opinion had taken place among geologists of late years ; and after 

 disposing of the first of these two points he proceeds to say : 



" In reference to the other great question, or the earliest date of 

 vital phenomena on this planet, the late discoveries in Canada have 

 at least demonstrated that certain theories founded in Europe on 

 mere negative evidence were altogether delusive. In the course of a 

 geological survey, carried on under the able direction of Sir William 

 E. Logan, it has been shown that, northward of the Eiver St. Law- 

 rence, there is a vast series of stratified and crystalline rocks of 

 gneiss, micaschist, quartzite, and limestone, about 40,000 feet in 

 thickness, which have been called Laurentian. They are more 

 ancient than the oldest fossiliferous strata of Europe, or those to 

 which the term primordial had been rashly assigned. In the first 



