George Mercer Dawson. — B. J. H. 73 
He was a careful student of glacial phenomena and accord- 
ing" to Dr. G. J. Hinde,* was the first to describe the glacial 
origin of the Missouri Coteau, and in the interior of British 
Columbia he has shown that at one period of the Ice age there 
was a confluent ice-mass, the surface of which stood at a level 
of 7,000 feet above the sea, and that it must have been at least 
from 2,000 to 3.000 feet in thickness. He has further estab- 
lished the fact that the movements of the glacier ice in this 
region were not only to the south and south-east, and through 
the transverse valley and gaps of the Coast ranges to the ocean, 
but that it had also a northerly flow, and passed down the val- 
leys of the Felly and Lewes branches of the Yukon river. Dr. 
Dawson also maintained that the northern part of the great 
plains had been submerged, and that their glaciation was in 
the main due to floating ice. 
With regard to his ethnological work we cannot do better 
than quote from Mr. W. J. McGee's recent appreciative no- 
tice in the Anieriean Anthropologist. Mr. McGee says: 
"While several of Dr. Dawson's titles and the prefatory re- 
marks in some of his papers imoly that his ethnological re- 
searches were subsidiary to his geologic work, and while his 
busy life never afiforded opportunity for monographic treat- 
ment 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 ad- 
dition 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 afifords 
the foundation for scientific knowledge of the North American 
natives." 
Dawson's most notable contribution to ethnology was un- 
doubtedly his memoir on the Haida Indians of the Queen Char- 
lotte islands, but he also published "Notes on the Indian 
Tribes of the Yukon District and Adjacent Northern Portion 
of British Columbia," a valuable memoir entitled "Notes and 
Observations of the Kwakiool People of Vancouver Island," 
"Notes on the Shuswaj) Peo])le of British C()lum1)ia," and 
other papers. 
•Geological Magazine, May, 1897. 
