562 
resulting in years of suffering and final de- 
formity. He consequently left school, and 
his education, until he was old enough to 
enter college, was carried on chiefly by pri- 
vate tutors. While not neglecting the or- 
dinary subjects of a school curriculum, he 
was allowed to follow out lines of study in 
which he found a particular interest and 
‘in this way learned many things which 
were later of the greatest value to him. 
Surrounded by books, chemical apparatus, 
paints and pencils, the days were never too 
long, and photography, bookbinding, paint- 
ing magic lantern slides, pyrotechny and 
even cheese-making were among his many 
occupations. He seemed to absorb knowl- 
edge rather than to study, and was always 
cheerful, amusing and popular, other boys 
flocking round him and invariably submit- 
ting to his unconscious leadership. At times 
he suffered much pain and was deprived of 
many things dear to boys, but was never 
heard to complain. When quite a lad he 
often accompanied his father on his geolog- 
ical excursions with the students of McGill 
College on Saturdays, and even on longer 
expeditions to Murray Bay, Gaspe and the 
Joggins, and was always a helpful and 
bright companion. 
At nineteen he had recovered his health 
and entered McGill College,where he studied 
for a year, and in the following year en- 
tered the Royal School of Mines in London. 
He went to England in a sailing ship, for 
the benefit of the longer voyage, and on the 
way overamused himself by studying navi- 
gation under the captain. Years later 
when he chartered a schooner, in order to 
,make an examination of the Queen Char- 
lotte Islands, the captain of the latter, prov- 
ing to be drunken and unsatisfactory, was 
dismissed, and Dawson navigated the 
schooner himself during the remainder of 
the trip, and this on a deeply indented and 
dangerous coast, of which at that time no 
chart existed. 
SCIENCE. 
[N. 8S. Vou. XIII. No. 328. 
At the Royal School of Mines he took the 
regular course, extending over three years, 
taking the Duke of Cornwall’s Scholarship, 
and the Forbes medal and prize in paleon- 
tology and natural history. While at the 
Royal School of Mines he paid especial at- 
tention to the study of geology and paleon- 
tology under Ramsay, Huxley and Hther- 
idge, and also devoted much time to the 
study of chemistry and metallurgy in the 
laboratories of Frankland and Percy. 
Returning to Canada, he was engaged for 
a year in mine surveys in Nova Scotia and 
in lecturing at Morrin College, Quebec, 
and in 1873 was appointed Geologist and 
Botanist to Her Majesty’s North American 
Boundary Commission, which was to fix the 
boundary line from the Lake of the Woods 
to the Rocky Mountains, and which had 
been at work for over a year. There are 
but few corners of the earth which now ap- 
pear so far off as the great Northwest did 
at that time—a veritable terra incognita. 
Fort Garry, now the city of Winnipeg, was 
the last point of civilization and the 49th 
parallel had to be traversed on horseback or 
on foot, the provisions and materials being 
taken along in Red River carts. The diffi- 
culties now experienced in traversing that 
district were then increased by its remote- 
ness from civilization and the fact that it 
was unexplored. In summer there was not 
only the scorching heat of the Plains, but 
the prairie fires, the difficulty of procuring 
and carrying firewood, the scarcity of 
water, and, in the late autumn, the cold 
with all its accompanying inconveniences. 
Notwithstanding these difficulties, how- 
ever, during the two years in which he was 
a member of the Boundary Commission, he 
accumulated materials for an elaborate and 
very valuable ‘ Report of the Geology and 
Resources of the Country in the Vicinity of 
the 49th Parallel,’ accompanied with maps 
and many illustrations, which was published 
in Montreal in 1875. In connection with 
