Presidents Annual Address. 
33 
and sustained by the spicules which traversed it. A similar 
sponge was found in the fine black shales of Division I. 
Band d, of the St. John Group, at Musquash, 
It seems doubtful if the system of rocks in which these 
three organisms have been found, is of exactly the same age 
as that which in the Province of Quebec has been found to 
contain Eozoon. Sir William Logan, who examined our lime- 
stones many years ago, thought them more recent than the 
Laurentian limestones of the Ottawa Valley. Pie found them 
less crystalline than those. There seems no reason, however, 
why the sponges which are so plentifully distributed in these 
Acadian limestones of the “Upper Series,” should not be 
found also in that eozoonal limestones and associated deposits 
of the Ottawa Valley, as they appear to have had a wide range 
in early Cambrian and pre-Cambrian times. 
Lest I should weary you with the details of a subject 
which probably interests only a limited number, I now pass to 
another matter, which is of more immediate concern to the 
members of this society. 
Perhaps the most important event to us in the past year 
is the acquisition of the museum of the Mechanics’ Institute, 
including the Gesner collection. 
Learning that the directors of the Institute were about to 
wind up its affairs, your council thought it advisable to apply 
to that body for the transfer of the trust of the Gesner 
museum and the purchase of the remainder of their museum. 
The directors of the Institute have accepted the offer of your 
council and the collections they held have now passed into 
your hands. 
The Gesner collection, which forms the bulk of the Institute 
museum, will add greatly to the material available for the 
purposes of our society. Its ethnological collections contain 
many articles from Polynesia, China, the Indies and Australia, 
of which we had no counter-parts. Objects of this kind are 
useful for comparison with the rude implements, etc., of the 
existing Indian tribes of our country, and their predecessors. 
