EARLY DEVONIC HISTORY OF NEW YORK AND EASTERN NORTH AMERICA ig 



Historical note 



At this point I desire to state in summary the personal obligation 

 which the geologist in the Gaspe country must feel to his predecessors in 

 the same field. 



Sir William E. Logan, first director of the Geological Survey of 

 Canada, entered the region when it was without roads, and only its coasts 

 were settled here and there by fisherfolk. Guided by Indians on land 

 and by water, he sought and found the key to the geologic structure 

 of the country ; and so conclusiv^ely and with 

 such admirable finish was the work of this 

 master hand accomplished that in all the 

 years since elapsed from 1844 and 1845 little 

 has been added to, and naught subtracted 

 from his achievements. The problems of 

 geologic structure were not, indeed, com- 

 plicated, but they were and continue with 

 growing importance to be of far-reaching 

 significance. Like Hall in the Fourth dis- 

 trict of New York, he builded better than he Yi^ 

 knew and as that region has become classical 

 in the paleozoic geology of America because 

 of the simplicity of its phenomena and pro- Logan 



fusion of its ancient faunas, so the Gaspe country, unsurpassed in the bril- 

 liancy and fulness of its presentments, will always be a monument to the 

 prowess and genius of this great Canadian. Logan determined the succes- 

 sion of the rocks and classified them by name and contents ; he elucidated 

 the structure of the country, determined the character of the folding, tracing 

 the axes of the folds from coast inland, and executed a triangulation survey. 

 With Sir William in these early days was associated Mr Alexander Murray. 

 In 1857 and 1858 the survey was continued by Mr James Richardson and 

 in 1862 by Robert Bell, now chief geologist of the Dominion Survey. In 



