With Macoun’s appointment the Survey had well-established depart- 
ments of geology, mineralogy, paleontology, and biology, with specialists 
in each and a fair staff of artists, taxidermists, preparators, and other 
trained assistants. Work of a high order had also been commenced in 
Canadian anthropology by G. M. Dawson. Dawson, -who succeeded 
Selwyn as Director in 1895, was one of the most brilliant scientists among 
the long list of men who at one time or another belonged to the Geological 
Survey. He was the second son of Professor (afterwards Sir) William 
Dawson, of McGill University. Born August 1, 1849, at Pictou, Nova 
Scotia, he was educated at Montreal High School, McGill University, 
and the Royal School of Mines, London, where he studied under Huxley and 
Ramsay. In 1871 he was appointed geologist and botanist to Her Majesty’s 
North American Boundary Commission created to fix the boundary 
between Canada and the United States from Lake of the Woods to the 
Rocky mountains. The breadth of Dawson’s scientific interest is indicated 
by the fact that five of the papers he wrote upon observations made during 
the boundary survey were “Lignite Formations of the West,” “Occurrence 
of Foraminifera, Coccoliths, etc., in the Cretaceous Rocks of Manitoba,” 
“Some Canadian Species of Spongillas,” “Superficial Geology of the Central 
Region of North America,” and “Locust Invasion of 1874 in Manitoba 
and the Northwest Territories.” He was appointed to the staff of the 
Geological Survey in 1875, and was Director from 1895 until his death, 
on March 2, 1901. He made numerous contributions to the ethnology 
of the Indian peoples, of which his report “On the Haida Indians of the 
Queen Charlotte Islands” in the Report of Progress for 1878-79, is probably 
the most important. He also collected much valuable Indian material 
for the Museum. W. J. McGee, writing in the American Anthropologist, 
said of his ethnological work: 
“While several of Dr. Dawson’s titles and the prefatory remarks in some of his papers 
imply that his ethnological researches were subsidiary to his geological work, and w’hile 
his busy life never afforded opportunity for monographic treatment of Canada’s aborigines, 
it is nevertheless true that he made original observations and records of standard value, 
that much of his work is still unique, and that his contributions, both personal and indirect, 
materially enlarged knowledge of our native tribes. It is well within bounds to say that in 
addition to his other gifts to knowledge, George M. Dawson was one of Canada’s foremost 
contributors to ethnology, and one of that handful of original observers whose work affords 
the foundation for scientific knowledge of the North American natives.” 
Dawson was the leading member of a committee appointed in 1884 
by the British Association for Advancement of Science to study the physical 
character, language, and social conditions of the Indians of Canada, and 
in 1896 he was chosen as chairman of an ethnological survey of Canada. 
At the time of the meeting of the British Association for Advancement 
of Science in 1897 the Victoria Colonist said of him: 
“In one sense he is the discoverer of Canada, for the Geological Survey, of which he 
has been the chief, has done more than all other agencies combined to make the potentialities 
of the Dominion known to the world.” 
All the principal activities of the present National Museum were being 
performed forty years ago, and also many of its minor activities. One 
of these is the distribution of specimens of minerals, rocks, and other 
natural history material to schools and other educational institutions. 
The first work of this kind w T as done in 1874, when, according to Dr. 
Selwyn, 
