George Mercer Daivson. 421 



various stages of metamorphism. While working in 

 connection with the Boundary Commission also, he 

 studied the crystalline rocks in the Lake of the Woods 

 district, and concluded that a considerable portion of 

 the Huronian formation there consists of metamor- 

 phosed volcanic rocks. 



He was a careful student of glacial phenomena 

 and, according to Dr. G. J. Hinde,* was the first to 

 describe the glacial origin of the Missouri Coteau, 

 and, in the interior of British Columbia, he has shown 

 that at one period of the Ice age there was a confluent 

 ice-mass, the surface of which stood at a level of 7,000 

 feet above the sea, and that it must have been at least 

 from 2,000 to 3,000 feet in thickness. He has further 

 established the fact that the movements of the glacier 

 ice in this region were not only to the south and south- 

 cast, and through the transverse valley and gaps of 

 the Coast ranges to the ocean, but that it had also a 

 northerly flow, and passed down the valleys of the 

 Pelly and Lewes branches of the Yukon river. Dr. 

 Dawson also maintained that the northern part of the 

 great plains had been submerged, and that their glacia- 

 tion was in the main due to floating ice. 



With regard to his ethnological work we cannot do 

 better than quote from Mr. W. J. McGee's recent 

 appreciative notice in the A7nerican Anthropologisi. 

 Mr. McGee says : " While several of Dr. Dawson's 

 titles and the prefatory remarks in some of his papers 

 imply that his ethnological researches were subsidiary 

 to his geological work, and vdiile his busy life never 

 afforded opportunity for monographic treatment of 

 Canada's aborigines, it is nevertheless true that he 

 made original observations and records of standard 

 value, that much of his work is still unique, and that 



V2 Geological Magazine, May, 1897. 



