NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY.

ANNUAL MEETING.

The annual meeting of the Society was held in its rooms on the evening of May 18th, Principal Dawson, President, in the chair. A large number of the members were present. Mr. J. F. Whiteaves, the Recording Secretary, read the minutes of the last annual meeting; after which the usual annual address of the President was read, as follows:

ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT.

GENTLEMEN, I labor on this occasion under the disadvantage of having had twice in succession to prepare the annual address of the President; a circumstance which should not ordinarily occur in a society of this character, in which, following the usage of our older sisters, we should endeavor to have a new mind brought to bear on this work in each successive year. I shall however take advantage of this circumstance to deviate somewhat from the course usual with us on such occasions, and, after merely glancing at the scientific work of the Society, to direct your attention to some speculations of my own on subjects now attracting the attention of naturalists.

Dr.

The scientific papers laid before this Society in its session just concluded, if not quite so numerous as in some previous sessions, are not inferior in point of interest and importance. In geology, Sir William Logan has continued in our journal the discussion of the age and distribution of the Quebec Group of Rocks. Hunt has given further and important facts in chemical geology. Professor Bell has illustrated certain portions of the superficial deposits, and has described one of our most important quarries of roofing-slate. Mr. McFarlane has contributed an elaborate discussion of the interior condition of our planet and of the mode of formation of Metamorphic and Igneous Rocks. Professor Bailey has elucidated an obscure portion of the Geology of New Brunswick, indirectly of much interest to Canadian geologists. Mr. Billings has contributed a paper on a disputed genus of Bra

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chiopods. Professor How has given us Analyses of Mineral Waters in Nova Scotia. Mr. Jones has sent us an interesting paper on the geological importance of Ocean Currents. I have myself occupied some space in our proceedings with my researches on Reptiles and Plants of the Coal-Period; and in connection with these, I would desire to say here that I regard the conclusions of Dr. Hunt in his short but valuable paper on the Climate of the Paleozoic period as of great importance. Whatever views we may adopt as to the original heated condition of the earth, if we take into account the enormous length of time required by the calculations of physicists for the reduction of the earth's temperature even one degree, it seems chimerical to suppose that any appreciable effect on climate could have been produced by internal heat in the coal-period. Yet the character and distribution of the flora of that period would appear to imply a comparatively high and equable temperature in the northern temperate and subarctic zones. Now if the experiments of Tyndall, cited by Dr. Hunt, can be taken to establish that a small percentage of carbonic acid and an additional amount of aqueous vapour diffused through the atmosphere would largely economise the solar heat by preventing radiation, and thus give conditions similar to those of a glassroofed conservatory, we have in this consideration, in connection. with the known distribution of land and water in the carboniferous era, a sufficient cause for any difference of climatal conditions required by the flora. To appreciate more fully the value of this suggestion, it would be necessary to make experiments as to the amount of carbonic acid which might be beneficially present in the air, in the case of plants like those of the coal-period, for instance Ferns, Lycopodiaceae and Cycadaca, and also to calculate the effect of such proportion of carbonic acid in impeding radiation.

Before leaving the work of the Society in the past year, I must not omit to mention that we have not neglected zoology and botany; and among contributions of this kind I could have wished to notice at some length those of Mr. Packard on the Marine Invertebrates of Labrador, and of Professor Lawson on Canadian Botany.

For example, those of Poisson and Hopkins, which would give 100,000,000,000 of years for a diminution of one to three degrees of temperature.

By far the most important publication of the past year, in the Natural History of Canada, has been the great Report of the Geological Survey, a work in which, as the achievement of members of this Society, we may very well take pride; and on which we may congratulate ourselves as facilitating the labors of those among us who pay attention to geology, either with a view to practical or scientific results, and as greatly raising the scientific reputation of this country.

The Report of the Survey has already been reviewed in the Naturalist, and I propose here not so much to say anything as to its general merits, as to refer to a few points in Canadian geologyto which it directs our attention.

One of these is the discovery of fossils in the old Laurentian rocks, heretofore usually named Azoic, as being destitute of life, and much older than any rocks known to contain fossils. The oldest remains of living beings, until this discovery, had been found in rocks known as Cambrian, or Primordial, and equivalent in age to our oldest Silurian of Canada, or at the most to our Huronian. But the Huronian series in Canada rests on the upturned edges of the Laurentian, which had been hardened and altered before the Huronian series was deposited. Again, Sir William Logan has shown that the Laurentian system itself contains two distinct series of beds, the upper of which rests unconformably on the lower. There are thus in Canada at least two great series of rocks, of such thickness as to indicate two distinct periods each of vast length, below the lowest fossiliferous rocks of other countries. Yet in the lowest of these so-called Azoic groups fossils have now been found; Canada thus distancing all other parts of the world, so far as yet known, in the antiquity of its oldest fossils.

I have had the happiness to submit these remarkable specimens to microscopic examination, at the request of Sir W. E. Logan, and have arrived at the conclusion that they are of animal nature, and belong to the very humblest type of animal existence known, that of the Rhizopods, though they far outstrip in magnitude any known modern representatives of that group. The discovery of this remarkable fossil, to be known as the Eozoon Canadense, will be one of the brightest gems in the scientific crown of the Geological Survey of Canada.

In connection with this subject, it is to be observed that the

grand order of succession in the [Laurentian system seems to be the same with that so often repeated in other parts of the geological scale, coarse fragmentary beds represented by conglomerate and gneiss; calcareous and fossiliferous bands represented by the Eozoön limestones; and finer earthy deposits, represented by felspathic rocks. This brings the Laurentian into a cycle somewhat similar to that of the Potsdam sandstone, the Chazy and Trenton limestone, and the Utica slate and Hudson River in the Lower Silurian; or to that of the Medina sandstone, the Niagara limestone, and Lower Helderberg in the Upper Silurian; or to that of the Oriskany sandstone, Corniferous limestone, and Hamilton and Chemung groups in the Devonian; or to that of the Lower Carboniferous conglomerates and sandstones, the Carboniferous limestones, and the Coal-measures in the Carboniferous period. This recurrence of cycles of deposit cannot be accidental. It is more or less to be seen throughout the geological scale, and in all countries; and as I have elsewhere pointed out, it includes numerous subordinate cycles within the same formation, as in the coal-measures. Eaton, Hunt, and Dana have referred to it; but it deserves a more careful study as a means of settling the sequence of oscillations of land and water in connection with the succession of life. It will also be important in giving fixity to our geological classifications, and may eventually aid in establishing more precise views of the dynamics of geology and of the lapse of geological time. The progress of the earth has, like most other kinds of progress, been not by a continuous evolution, but by a series of cycles, of great summers and winters, or days and nights, of physical and vital changes, in each of which all things seem to revolve back to the place of beginning; only to begin a new cycle or new turn of a spiral, similar to the last in its general course, though altogether different in its details, accompaniments, and results.

There is another subject of great geological importance on which the publication of the Report enables strong ground to be taken. I refer to the conditions under which the Boulder-Drift of Canada was deposited. It has been customary to refer this to the action of ice-laden seas and currents, on a continent first subsiding and then re-elevated. But this opinion has recently been giving way before a re-assertion of the doctrine that land-glaciers have been the principal agents in the distribution of the boulder-drift, and in the erosions with which it was accompanied. I confess that I have stead

ily rejected this last doctrine; being convinced that insuperable physical and meteorological objections might be urged against it, and that it was not in accordance with the facts which I had myself observed in Nova Scotia and in Canada. The additional facts contained in the present Report enable me to assert with confidence, though with all humility, that glaciers could scarcely have been the agents in the striation of Canadian rocks, the transport of Canadian boulders, or the excavation of Canadian lake-basins. In making this statement I know that I differ in some degree from many of my geological friends, but I know that they will be rejoiced that I should freely and frankly state the reasons of my belief.

The facts to be accounted for are the striation and polishing of rock-surfaces, the deposit of a sheet of unstratified clay and stones, the transport of boulders from distant sites lying to the northward, and the deposit on the boulder-clay of beds of stratified clay and sand, containing marine shells. The rival theories in discussion are first, that which supposes a gradual subsidence and re-elevation, with the action of the sea and its currents, bearing ice at certain seasons of the year; and, secondly, that which supposes the American land to have been covered with a sheet of glacier several thousands of feet thick.

The last of these theories, without attempting to undervalue its application to such regions as those of the Alps or of Spitzbergen or Greenland, has appeared to me inapplicable to the drift-deposits of eastern America, for the following among other reasons:

1. It requires a series of suppositions unlikely in themselves and not warranted by facts. The most important of these is the coincidence of a wide-spread continent and a universal covering of ice in a temperate latitude. In the existing state of the world, it is well known that the ordinary conditions required by glaciers in temperate latitudes are elevated chains and peaks extending above the snow-line; and that cases in which, in such latitudes, glaciers extend nearly to the sea-level, occur only where the mean temperature is reduced by cold ocean-currents approaching to high land, as for instance in Terra del Fuego and the southern extremity of South America. But the temperate regions of North America could not be covered with a permanent mantle of ice under the existing conditions of solar radiation; for even if the whole were elevated into a table-land, its breadth would secure a suffi