552 PROCEEDINGS OF THE WASHINGTON MEETING 



Sir Charles Lyell, in 1841, on his first visit to America, met Sir Wil- 

 liam and was hy him conducted to many places of geological interest in 

 Nova Scotia, and on his subsequent visit in 1852 they together continued 

 their studies in Nova Scotian geology. In a letter to Leonard Horner, 

 dated September 12 of this year, Lyell writes: 



" My companion, J. W. Dawson, is continually referring to the curious botanical 

 points respecting calamites, endogenites, and other coal plants, on which light is 

 thrown by certain specimens collected by him at Pictou. He told me that the root 

 of the pond lily Nymphxa odorata, most resembled Stigmaria in the regularity of 

 its growth, and Doctor Robb showed me a dried specimen, a rhizoma, which being 

 of a totally different family and therefore not strictly like, still suggests the proba- 

 bility of the Stigmaria having grown in slush in like manner." 



And in another part of the same letter he, referring to the now cele- 

 brated Joggins section on the coast of Nova Scotia, says : 



" Dawson and I set to work and measured foot by foot many hundred yards of 

 the cliffs, where forests of erect trees and calamites most abound. It was hard 

 work, as the wind one day was stormy, and we had to look sharp lest the rocking 

 of living trees just ready to fall from the top of the undermined cliff should cause 

 some of the old fossil ones to come down upon us by the run. But I never enjoyed 

 the reading of a marvelous chapter of the big volume more. We missed a botan- 

 ical aide-decamp much when we came to the top and bottoms of calamites and all 

 sorts of strange pranks which some of the compressed trees played." 



In 1854 Forbes, who was professor of geology and zoology in the 

 University of Edinburgh, died, and Lyell wrote to Sir William, advising 

 him to appty for the chair, promising him his support and that of a num- 

 ber of his influential friends, while Sir William's "Acadian Geology," 

 which had just been published in Edinburgh, testified to his abundant 

 fitness for the position. He was about to set sail for Scotland to prose- 

 cute his candidature for the chair when he received word that the place 

 had been filled, sooner than had been anticipated, by the appointment 

 of a zoologist who had been strongly supported by the medical school 

 of the university, but, by a strange coincidence, he received, almost on 

 the very day that he was to sail for Scotland, a letter offering him the 

 principalship of McGill University. 



This institution, founded by royal charter in 1821, had made but slow 

 progress in its earlier years, and was at this time, through litigation and 

 other causes, almost in a state of collapse. Sir William, then Mr Dawson, 

 was pointed out to the governors of the college by Sir Edmund Head, 

 then Governor-General of Canada, as a man who, if his services could be 

 secured, was eminently fitted to undertake the task of reconstructing it. 



The services of Mr Dawson were accordingly secured, and in 1855 he 



