﻿44 Obituary — E. Billings. 



at Ottawa and partly at Potsdam, in the State of New York. Enter- 

 ing the Law Society of Upper Canada as a student in 1840, he was 

 called to the Bar in 1845. He practised first in the town of Eenfrew, 

 and afterwards in Ottawa, or Bytown as it was then called. While 

 residing in the latter place he seei^is to have found the study of 

 nature more congenial to his tastes than the formalities of the Courts; 

 but whether this was the case or not, it is certain that he commenced 

 to devote much of his time to collecting the organic remains of the 

 Silurian rocks of the neighbourhood, and amassed in particular a 

 fine and almost unique series of Cystideans and Crinoids, which he 

 ultimately presented to the Museum of the Geological Survey. 



His earliest contributions to the literature of science were a few 

 letters on geological subjects which appeared in the Ottawa Citizen, 

 but the first palceontological papers of any consequence from his pen 

 were a couple of articles " On some new genera and species of 

 Cystidea from the Trenton Limestone," which were published in 

 the Journal of the Canadian Institute of Toronto for 1854. 



In 1856 Mr. Billings commenced the publication of the "Canadian 

 Naturalist and G-eologist" as a monthly magazine, of which he was 

 both editor and proprietor. Out of a total of 63 papers in the first 

 volume of the new venture, 55 were either written or compiled by 

 him. Since 1857 the "Naturalist" has been edited by a Committee 

 of the Natural History Society of Montreal, but Mr. Billings was 

 always an active member of this Committee, and there is scarcely 

 a volume of the journal to which he did not contribute. 



The merit of Mr. Billings' descriptions of fossils and his zeal in 

 their study did not escape the notice of Canada's veteran geologist, 

 the late Sir W. E. Logan. Accordingly, in 1856, Sir William offered 

 Mr. Billings the position of PalEeontologist to the Geological Survey 

 of Canada, an appointment which was at once accepted. In the same 

 year Mr. Billings removed to Montreal, the head-quarters of the 

 Survey, and entered on the discharge of his new duties, which he 

 continued to perform with equal credit to himself and advantage to 

 the country up to the time of his death. 



His principal memoirs during his twenty years of office are an 

 illustrated monograph on the Lower Silurian Cystidea and Asteriadgs, 

 also another on the Crinoidea of the same formation, which together 

 form Decades Nos. 3 and 4 of " Canadian Organic Eemains : " the 

 palaeontological determinations in the " Geology of Canada " for 

 1863 : " Palgeozoic Fossils," vol. i., with 426 pages and 401 wood- 

 cuts, published at Montreal in 1865 : Part 2 of the second volume of 

 ditto, issued in 1874 : and " Catalogues of the Silurian Fossils of the 

 Island of Anticosti," Montreal, 1866. He wrote numerous palaeonto- 

 logical papers, not only for the " Canadian Naturalist," but also for 

 the American Journal of Science and Arts, and for these pages. 



Mr. Billings was for many years one of the Vice-Presidents of the 

 Natural History Society of Montreal, was elected a Member of the 

 Canadian Institute of Toronto in January, 1854, and a Fellow of the 

 Geological Society of London in 1858. 



In 1862 he was awarded a bronze medal in Class 1 by the jurors 



