556 PROCEEDINGS OF THE WASHINGTON MEETING 



these creatures were embodied in a series of subsequent papers which 

 appeared from time to time. 



On taking up his residence in Montreal his attention was attracted to 

 the remarkable development of Pleistocene deposits exposed in the 

 vicinity of the city, and he undertook a detailed study of them, and 

 especially of the remarkably rich fossil fauna which they contain. He 

 also studied subsequently the Pleistocene deposits of the lower Saint 

 Lawrence river and instituted comparisons between them and the present 

 fauna of the gulf of Saint Lawrence and of the Labrador coast. 



He was led by these studies to believe that the deposits in question 

 had been accumulated largely through the action of sea-borne ice, and 

 being anxious to stud}' the evidence on which the continental geologists 

 had based their views of the high efficiency of land ice as an eroding 

 agent, he visited Switzerland in 1865 and there studied the phenomena 

 of glacial action. By these studies he was led to attribute much less 

 importance to land ice as an eroding agent than was commonly assigned 

 to it. " I was also led to believe," he wrote shortly before his death, 

 " that while the carrying power of a glacier is undoubtedly great, it is 

 altogether inferior to that of sea-borne ice, whether in the form of ice- 

 fields, grinding on the shores, or of icebergs, and these views, arrived at 

 and published in 1865, T have ever since consistently maintained." 



The results of his studies on the Canadian Pleistocene appeared in a 

 series of papers as the work progressed, and were finally embodied in 

 a volume entitled " The Canadian Ice Age," which was issued in 1893 

 as one of the publications of the Peter Redpath Museum of McGill Uni- 

 versity. This is one of the most important contributions to the paleon- 

 tology of the Pleistocene which has hitherto appeared. 



As Sir William was* always much more interested in the history of life 

 than in an}' of the inorganic aspects of the science of geology, he consid- 

 ered one of his most important contributions to scientific knowledge to 

 be the discovery of Eozoon canadense. The true character of this remark- 

 able object, concerning which there has been so much discussion, can 

 hardly be considered even yet as definitely settled. Its resemblance 

 microscopically to certain organic forms is so remarkable that some of 

 the most experienced observers have accepted it as of organic origin. 

 Its field relations, however, leave but little doubt that it is inorganic. 



The literature of this subject, which includes many papers by Sir 

 William, is quite voluminous, but the chief facts are summed up in his 

 book entitled " The Dawn of Life," which appeared in 1875. 



Sir William was also a prolific writer of popular works on various 

 geological topics. Among these may be mentioned his " Story of the 

 earth and man," his " Fossil men and their modern representatives," 



