Vol. 58. | ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. ly 
He was not in any sense a specialist, but a representative of an 
old school which is rapidly diminishing in numbers. [A.S. W.] 
Dr. Georcr Mercer Dawson was the second son of the late 
Sir William Dawson, who, for upwards of forty-four years, held the 
post of Principal of McGill University. He was born at Pictou, in 
Nova Scotia, on August Ist, 1849. Six years later his father moved 
with his family to Montreal, where the local surroundings at that 
time were such as to stimulate young Dawson’s inborn love of 
nature. 
His early education was carried on for the most part under 
tutors. At the age of eighteen he entered the McGill College, where 
he attended lectures for one session (1868-69); but in the following 
year he came to London, and commenced a distinguished career as a 
student of the Royal School of Mines at Jermyn Street. His success 
at this institution 1s attested by the fact that he carried off both 
the Edward Forbes Medal in Paleontology & Natural History and 
the Murchison Medal in Geology. 
On his return to Canada he spent some time in investigating the 
copper and iron-ore deposits of his native province of Nova Scotia. 
By bent and training Dawson was eminently fitted for the scientific 
exploration of unknown lands, and in 1873 he was fortunate in 
obtaining an appointment which exactly suited him—that of 
geologist and botanist to the British North American Boundary- 
Commission. The results of his work on the Commission were 
published in a Report which clearly shows his exceptional powers 
as a scientific pioneer, and is now literally worth its weight in 
gold. ‘ 
In 1875 he was appointed to the staff of the Geological Survey 
of Canada, and soon afterwards commenced his long series of 
explorations in British Columbia and in the vast unknown regions 
of the North-west. Although he became familiar with the geology 
of every part of the Dominion, his name will always be especially 
associated with the North-west, where he was well known and 
greatly respected, and where Dawson City has arisen to com- 
memorate his celebrated explorations, carried out during the years 
1887 and 1888, on the Yukon River. 
Dawson was no ‘tenderfoot.? Although apparently of a fragile 
consitution and unfitted for arduous physical labour, his powers of 
endurance were remarkable. In one of his expeditions he coverea 
a distance of 1300 miles by boat and a portage of 50 miles from 
VOL. LVIII. ia 
