memoir of sir j. William Dawson 551 



While still at school in Pictou, at the age of twelve he developed a love 

 for natural science, inherited from his father, and made large collections 

 of fossil plants from the Nova Scotia Coal Measures, so well exposed 

 about his native place. He speaks of himself at that time as being a 

 "moderately diligent', but not a specially brilliant pupil." On leaving 

 school he studied at Pictou College and subsequently at the University 

 of Edinburgh. While at the former seat of learning, at the age of six- 

 teen, he read before the local natural history society his first paper, 

 having the somewhat ambitious title " On the structure and history of 

 the earth." 



At Edinburgh he studied under Jamieson, Forbes, and Balfour, as 

 well as with Alexander Rose, whom he refers to in some notes and 

 reminiscences as a single-hearted mineralogist and the greatest authority 

 on the mineralogy of Scotland. He records his impression of the Uni- 

 versity of Edinburgh at that time as being " a very imperfect s'chool of 

 natural science in comparison with our modern institutions," and adds : 

 "Jamieson, who was my principal teacher, devoted a large portion of 

 the earlier lectures of his course to physiography, and the rest to min- 

 erals and rocks, but I was surprised to find how little even some of the 

 most eminent English geologists of the day knew of mineralogy, and how 

 uncertain in consequence was their diagnosis in the field of the nature 

 of rock masses." 



In 1841 he met, however, two men with whom he was afterward in- 

 timately associated in his work — Sir Charles Lyell, who more than any 

 other man gave form to modern geological science, and Sir William 

 Logan, who gave the first great impetus to the study of the older rocks 

 of the northern half of the North American continent and who founded 

 the Geological Survey of Canada. 



He returned to Nova Scotia in 1847, and two years later went to Halifax 

 to give a course of lectures on natural history subjects in connection with 

 Dalhousie College, and organized classes for practical work in mineralogy 

 and paleontology. These were attended by students, citizens, and pupils 

 of higher schools — a foreshadowing of university extension. In 1850, at 

 the age of 30, having already attracted some attention by the publication 

 of a number of papers, reports, and lectures, he was appointed Super- 

 intendent of Education for Nova Scotia. His work in connection with 

 this position obliged him to travel continually through all parts of the 

 province, and on these journeys he accumulated that immense mass of 

 information concerning the geology and mineral resources of Nova 

 Scotia which is incorporated in his largest work — that entitled "Acadian 

 Geology." 



LXXXVIII— Rum,. Geoi,. Soc. Am., Vot,. 11, 1899 



