420 Canadian Eecord of Science. 



Along the crested mountain ridge, 



Or anticlinal hollow ; 

 Or gently with the hammer stroke 



The slumbering petrifaction, 

 That for a hundred million years 



Has been debarred from action. 



We can fancy him, too, sitting by his lonely camp 

 fire on the shores of the Pacific and penning the 

 following lines : 



" To rest on fragrant cedar boughs 



Close by the western ocean's rim, 

 While in the tops of giant pines 



The live-long night the sea-winds hymn, 

 And low upon the fretted shore 



The waves beat out the evermore." 



Dr. Dawson's geological work was carried on chiefly 

 in the region of the great prairies of tbe ISTorth-West 

 and British Columbia, but he was thoroughly informed 

 as to the geology of all parts of the Dominion. In the 

 K'orth-West, he paid particular attention to the rela- 

 tions of the Cretaceous and Laramie formations ; and 

 he discovered the presence in the Cretaceous of south- 

 ern Alberta of an important series of rocks — the Belly 

 Kiver group — which, he says, " must be considered 

 on the whole as a fresh-water foriuation." The 

 Kootanie group was also recognized by him as consti- 

 tuting a portion of the early Cretaceous in the Rocky 

 Mountain region. His study of a large area in the 

 interior plateau region of British Columbia established 

 the existence there of a great series of mica-schists 

 and gneisses supposed to be of Archaean age and 

 succeeded by Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian and 

 Carboniferous strata ; while in the Cordilleran region 

 of the same province he described the occurrence of 

 great deposits of contemporaneous volcanic rocks, in 



