Sir William Edmond Logan. 87 



Canadian minerals might be displayed to the best advantage. 

 And every one knows the result — the collection elicited uni- 

 versal admiration, and Mr. Logan received a highly compli- 

 mentary letter of thanks from the Prince Consort, and was 

 elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, his name having been 

 proposed by Sir Roderick Murchison. 



Returning to Canada in August, before the close of the Ex- 

 hibition, his explorations were renewed with undiminished 

 vigor, and the remainder of the season devoted to an examina- 

 tion of the rocks in the county of Beauharnois, where the Pots- 

 dam sandstones had afforded those curious tracks of crustaceans 

 to which Owen gave the name of Protichnites, and to a further 

 study of the Chaudi^re gold region. During the winter he 

 again visited England to attend to the distribution of a 

 portion of the Exhibition collection which was to be left there, 

 and to see to the return of the remainder. 



In 1852 an examination was made of a strip of country on the 

 north side of the St Lawrence, extending from Montreal to 

 Gape Tourmente below Quebec. The distribution of the fossil- 

 iferous rocks was accurately determined, and several excursions 

 were made into the hilly "metamorphic country" to the north. 

 In his report on this season's operations, published in 1854, Logan 

 for the first time designated the rocks comprising these hills as 

 the "Laurentian series," substituting this for "metamorphic 

 series," the name which he had previously employed, but 

 which, as he says, is applicable to any series of rocks in an 

 altered condition. 



The following season was spent among the Laurentian hills 

 of Grenville and the adjoining townships, a field which proved 

 so attractive that he afterward returned to it in 1856 and 1858. 

 Nearly the whole of lb64 was occupied in making preparations 

 for the Exhibition which was to take place at Paris in the fol- 

 lowing year, and to which Mr. Logan was to go as one of the 

 Canadian Commissioners. It was in the autumn of 1854 also, 

 that a select committee was appointed by the Canadian Govern- 

 ment to inquire into the best method of making the information 

 acquired by the Geological Survey more readily accessible to 

 the public. A lengthy report on the subject— indeed on the 

 entire working of the Survey — was published, and the evidence 

 which it contains is of a most flattering character, both as re- 

 gards the Director and those associated with him. 



Then came the Paris Exhibition of 1855, at which the repre- 

 sentation of the economic minerals of Canada was so complete 

 and the arrangement so admirable that the collection attracted 

 universal attention. This in itself Logan would have regarded 

 as amply repaying him for his trouble ; but greater honor was 

 in store for him. The Imperial Commission presented him with 



