34 
on April 20, 1798. In 1814, he was sent to Edinburgh to be educated; 
but, though a sojourn of only a few years was contemplated, a series of 
domestic circumstances was to keep him in the Old Country for twenty- 
six years. Although young Logan acquitted himself with distinction at 
Edinburgh High School, he left school in 1817 before entering a university 
to take a position in the counting house of an uncle in London. He lived 
in London for the next fourteen years. During this period, though most 
of his time seems to have been given to business, society, and travel, Logan 
must have devoted considerable attention to science, for in his letters he 
refers to his “scientific books" on chemistry, mineralogy, and geology and 
admits that he had become “a bit of a collector.” Certainly, when in 1831 
he went to Swansea, in Wales, to take a position in a copper-smelting works 
of which his uncle owned a share, he appears to have been well informed in 
the natural sciences. Although he was at first engaged in accounting, 
eventually he had to attend to the smelting of copper and mining of coal. 
By 1837 he was a Fellow of the Geological Society, had exhibited in that 
year before the British Association a geological map of South Wales coal 
district which attracted complimentary attention, and was Honorary 
Secretary and Curator of the geological department of the Royal Insti- 
tution (Museum) of South Wales, to which he contributed collections of 
minerals, metallurgical products, and birds which he himself shot and 
prepared. 
A naturally strong interest in Canada was accentuated now by a 
desire to satisfy his enthusiasm for geology in this virgin field. In August, 
1840, he embarked for Halifax. The arrival in Canada of Logan, pos- 
sessed with a passion for natural science, would seem to have coincided 
providentially with the decision of the government of the united provinces 
of Upper and Lower Canada to institute a geological survey. After spend- 
ing the summer of 1841 in travelling in United States and Canada, engaged 
chiefly in geological observations, he returned to England; but his friends 
in Montreal, knowing his desire to obtain the position of provincial geo- 
logist, placed his name before the Governor, Sir Charles Bagot. The 
position was offered to him in the spring of 1842 and accepted. 
In such manner was the foundation of the National Museum of Canada 
laid. For, although Logan is best known as the founder of the Geological 
Survey of Canada, in no less degree was he the founder of the National 
Museum of Canada, though for many years it was not to be known by this 
name. As will be seen, the Museum was to become a natural adjunct 
and outgrowth of the Geological Survey. 
THE LOGAN OR PRE-CONFEDERATION PERIOD 
Logan returned to Canada in the spring of 1843 to assume his new 
duties. Alexander Murray had meanwhile been appointed assistant 
provincial geologist and the two immediately began geological field work, 
Murray in the territory between lake Huron and lake Erie and Logan in 
Gaspe. During that summer they collected large quantities of minerals 
and fossils, and one of their first problems on returning to Montreal was 
wliat to do with their specimens. Logan’s brother, James, a business 
man in Montreal, came to their assistance by giving them an “upper 
chamber” in his warehouse on St. Gabriel street. There the specimens 
