Dr. George Mercer Dawson, F.R.S., whose portrait we present to our readers this month, is the son of Sir William Dawson, F.R.S., for many years Principal of McGill College, Montreal. Dr. Dawson was born at Pictou, Nova Scotia, August 2, 1849, and his early years were passed in Canada. After continuing his education in Scotland, he obtained his special training for a scientific career in the Royal School of Mines, Jermyn Street, of which he is an “Associate,” and where he was also awarded the “Murchison” and “Edward Forbes” Medals. His first scientific appointment was as Geologist and Botanist to the British North American Boundary Commission, which in the seasons of 1873–4 marked out the International Boundary between the United States and the Dominion of Canada, for a distance of 800 miles in length, from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains.

A collection of about twenty specimens of three or four kinds of shales, bearing several Estherian and small Molluscan fossils, was made by Mr. Joseph Mawson, F.G.S., Superintendent of the Bahia and San Francisco Railroad, several years ago, and presented by him to the British Museum. These are marked with the distances, in kilometres, from Bahia on the railway; and are provisionally referred by Mr. Mawson, some to the “Cretaceous” and some to the “Wealden” series.

While staying at Zermatt in the summer of 1894, I searched among the boulders from the Zmutt glacier for several types of rock, which, as suggested to me by Professor Bonney, were likely to occur. I am further indebted to him for kindly giving me his help and opinion on several questions while I was writing this note.

The earlier part of this paper is devoted to a short epitome of the stratigraphical evidence that the Yoredale rocks of Wensleydale are only the equivalents of the upper part of the Carboniferous Limestone, and that the so-called Yoredale Beds of South Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Derbyshire are an entirely different series, which occupy a position above the Carboniferous Limestone. After all, the important point is the palæontological evidence, which, to my mind, is absolutely conclusive.

In former papers on the surface deposits of Eastern England. I have analyzed the conditions of their occurrence and the character of their contents in view of the current theory which makes them the products of ice during an Ice Age. I have endeavoured to show that, tested by every empirical method, they utterly fail to sustain such a conclusion;—that in every character by which we can test these beds, or their component parts, they clearly and emphatically point to some other origin and cause than that of ice; and, on the other hand, that ice such as it is known to us, either in our laboratories or in Nature's laboratory, is quite incapable of producing the results demanded from it by the champions of the Glacial School who have discussed the surface geology of Eastern England.

In 1862, Professor T. Rupert Jones published some notes on a careful microscopical examination of five samples of clay from the Bracklesham beds of Bracklesham, Selsea, and the Isle of Wight (?). This paper gave a good idea of the systematic methods which could be employed in working over a sample of fossiliferous material, especially when rich in microzoa, and the results of which are often of great use to geologists and palæontologists.