1834, he made a tour through France and Spain, visiting many of the mines in the latter country, and making many observations on the geology of the regions through which he passed. In 1838, his uncle dying, Mr. Logan resigned his position at Swansea. But the nine years he spent here were well-spent years; for not only had he gained a practical knowledge of mining and metallurgy, which afterwards proved of the greatest value to him, but had done a large amount of very excellent geological work-work which caused Dr. Buckland, of Oxford, to say of him, "He is the most skillful geological surveyor of a coal-field I have ever known." During his stay at Swansea, he was an active worker for the interests of the Royal Institution of South Wales. He was Honorary Secretary and Curator of the geological department, and the Institution is indebted to him for valuable collections of minerals and metallurgical products, besides books, drawings and laboratory apparatus. The whole of his geological work in South Wales he placed gratuitously at the disposal of the Ordnance Geological Survey of Great Britain, and it was not only gladly accepted, but published "without alteration," and made the basis of future work in that region. Concerning it, Sir H. T. De la Beche afterwards wrote as follows:

"Prior to the appearance of the Geological Survey in that part of the country, Mr. W. E. Logan had carefully investigated it, and at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, held at Liverpool in 1837, he exhibited a beautifully executed map of it.

The work on this District being of an order so greatly superior to that usual with geologists, and corresponding, in the minuteness and accuracy of its detail, with the maps and sections executed by the Ordnance Geological Survey, we felt desirous of availing ourselves of it, when Mr. Logan most handsomely placed it at our disposal. Having verified this work with great care, we find it so excellent that we shall adopt it for that part of the country to which it relates, considering it but fair and proper that Mr. Logan should obtain that credit to which his labors so justly entitle him.

"His sections are all levelled and measured carefully with proper instruments, and his maps are executed with a precision only as yet employed, except in his case, on the Ordnance Geological Survey; it being considered essential on that survey, for the right progress of geology, and the applications to the useful purposes of life, that this accuracy and precision should be

attained."

In 1840, Logan read a paper before the Geological Society of London, in which he explained, for the first time, the true relation of the Stigmaria underclays to the overlying beds of coal,

showing that the underclay was the soil in which the plants grew which were afterwards converted into coal. Of the 100 thick and thin coal-seams in the South Wales coal-field, he found that not a single one was without an underclay, and the inference appeared to be that there was some essential connection between the production of the one and the existence of the other. To account," said he, "for the unfailing combination by drift, seems an unsatisfactory hypothesis; but whatever may be the mutual dependence of the phenomena, they give us reasonable grounds to suppose that in the Stigmaria ficoides we have the plant to which the earth is mainly indebted for those vast stores of fossil fuel which are now so indispensable to the comfort and prosperity of its inhabitants."

So much did he become interested in this subject that in the following year (1841) he crossed to America, and visited the coal-fields of Pennsylvania and Nova Scotia, in order to ascertain whether the same conditions existed there. Such he found to be the case; and in the following spring he read an interesting paper before the Geological Society, the object of which, to use his own words, "was to state the occurrence immediately below the coal-seams of America of the same Stigmaria beds as had been observed below those of South Wales, and to show the importance of this prevailing fact." Shortly after his return from America, he also visited coal-seams in the neighborhood of Falkirk, Scotland, there too, finding the Stigmaria clays beneath the coal.

It was during his visit to Nova Scotia, in 1841, that he discovered in the Lower Coal-measures of Horton Bluff the footprints of a reptilian animal-a discovery which, perhaps, failed to attract as much attention as it deserved, although it was the first instance in which any trace of reptiles had been detected as low down in the geological scale as the Carboniferous. The winter of 1841-42 was also spent in Canada, and the facts were obtained for a paper on the packing of ice in the St. Lawrence, which was subsequently read before the Geological Society of London.

Such, briefly, was the career of Logan previous to his appointment as Director of the Geological Survey of Canada. Already he had acquired a reputation in Britain as a geologist, and had given himself the best of trainings for the work upon which he was about to enter on this side of the Atlantic. what was meantime passing in Canada?

*

*

*

But

*

"In July, 1841, in the first United Parliament, a petition from the Natural History Society of Montreal, praying for aid to carry out a systematic geological survey of the Province, was presented by Mr. B. Holmes. It was referred to a select committee consisting of Messrs. Holmes, Neilson, Quesnel, Mer

A

rit, and the Hon. Mr. Killaly, but it was not reported on. similar petition was presented by Mr. Black, from the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, which was read. The government took up the matter, and on the motion of the Hon. B. Harrison, the sum of £1,500 sterling for the purpose of a survey was introduced into the estimates.'

*יו

Lord Sydenham dying in 1841, it fell to his successor, Sir Charles Bagot, to appoint a Provincial Geologist. Sir Charles referred the matter to Lord Stanley, Secretary of State for the Colonies, and His Lordship, on recommendation of Murchison, De la Beche, Sedgwick, and Buckland, offered the position to Mr. Logan in the spring of 1842.

Logan was now thoroughly in love with geology, and seeing in Canada the grandest of fields for original research, at once. accepted. Still he well understood the difficulties which lay before him, and shortly afterwards addressed the following words to De la Beche: "You are aware that I have been appointed by the Provincial Government of Canada to make a Geological Survey of that Colony. The extent and nature of the territory will render the task a most laborious one; but I am fully prepared to spare no exertion of which I am capable to render the work, when it is completed, satisfactory to those who have instituted the examination and creditable to myself.

*

* No one knows better than yourself how difficult it would be for one person to work with effect in all the branches of so extensivé a subject. To carry out the field-work with vigor, to reduce all the sections with the requisite degree of accuracy, and map the geographical distribution of the rocks, to collect minerals and fossils, and to analyze the one, and by laborious and extensive comparisons, to determine the geological age of the other, is quite impossible without a proper division of labor. * In Canada, all the expensive means of paleontological comparison have yet to be brought together. There is no arranged collection of fossils, and no such thing as a geological library to refer to."

*

Arriving in Canada late in August, 1842, Logan devoted several months to making a preliminary examination of the country, and to collecting information with regard to the topographical work which had been accomplished. This was done entirely at his own expense. In December, he returned to England to fulfill engagements there, but came out again in the following spring. During his visit to the old country, he was so fortunate as to secure the services of Mr. Alexander Murray, a gentleman who afterwards proved himself an invaluable assistant and friend, and who has contributed largely to our knowledge of the geology of Canada, and, more recently, to that of Newfoundland.

*From Scobie's Canadian Almanac for 1851.

Reaching Halifax on the 20th of May, Logan spent several weeks in examining portions of the coal-fields of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and it was at this time that he made his section of the Coal Measures at the South Joggins, which, as has been truly said, is "a remarkable monument of his industry and powers of observation." It gives details of nearly the whole thickness of the coal formation of Nova Scotia, or 14,570 feet, including 76 beds of coal and 90 distinct Stigmaria underclays. Shortly after his visit to the Joggins, he wrote to a friend as follows: "I never before saw such a magnificent section as is there displayed. The rocks along the coast are laid bare for thirty miles, and every stratum can be touched and examined in nearly the whole distance. A considerable portion has a high angle of inclination, and the geological thickness thus brought to view is very great. I measured and registered every bed occurring in a horizontal distance of ten miles, taking the angle of dip all the way along." And again, in a letter to De la Beche written in the spring of 1044, referring to the Joggins section, he says: "Since my return from field-work, I have reduced all the measurements and made out a vertical column. It occupies fifty-four pages of foolscap, closely written, and you will be astonished at the details in it.

Reaching Gaspé early in July, the summer and autumn were spent in making an examination of the coast, while Mr. Murray was at work in the Upper Province, examining the country between Lakes Huron and Erie. The Gaspé peninsula had been selected by Mr. Logan as the field for his first operations, as it was thought that outlying patches of the Carboniferons might be found to exist there, and the government was especially anxious to ascertain whether there was any truth in the reported occurrence of coal.

The following season, the work in Gaspé was continued, the Director being this time accompanied by Mr. Murray, who, in 1845, again carried on the work, while Mr. Logan was engaged in explorations on the Upper Ottawa and Mattawan. Altogether, during the three seasons, 800 miles of the Gaspé coast were examined, and several sections made across the peninsula, from the St. Lawrence to Bay Chaleur. No coal was found, but many geological facts of importance were accumulated, and a large amount of topographical work accomplished in what was previously almost a terra incognita.

"Living the life of a savage, sleeping on the beach in a blanket sack with my feet to the fire, seldom taking my clothes off, eating salt pork and ship's biscuit, occasionally tormented by mosquitoes,"-such is the record which Logan has left us of his Gaspé life, the foretaste of what was to be endured for many years. From early dawn till dusk he paced or paddled, and yet

his work was not finished, for while his Indians-often bis sole companions-smoked their pipes round the evening fire, he wrote his notes and plotted the day's measurements.

To give details of his work during the many remaining years of his life would be to write a book; and all that we can do here is to trace briefly what his movements were, at the same time calling special attention to those of his labors which have given him a world-wide fame.

The summer of 1846 found him studying the copper-bearing rocks of Lake Superior. These he showed to consist of two groups of strata, the "upper" and the "lower," the latter of which was seen at Thunder Bay to rest unconformably upon chloritic slates belonging to an older series, to which the name of Huronian was subsequently given. This older set of rocks, which he had already observed, in 1845, on Lake Temiscamang, he had ample opportunity of studying in 1848, when he devoted several months to an examination of the Canadian coast and islands of Lake Huron, where the formation attains-as shown by Murray-a thickness of 18,000 feet.

The seasons of 1847 and 1849, and a portion of that of 1848, were employed in studying the rocks of the Eastern Townships. Part of these were shown to be a prolongation of the Green Mountains of Vermont, and to consist of altered Silurian strata instead of "Primary strata," as was previously supposed by American geologists. In 1849 also, a short time was spent in an examination of the rocks about Bay St. Paul and Murray Bay, where coal had been reported to exist. The member for Saguenay County had previously made application to the Legislature for means to carry on boring operations in the vicinity of Bay St. Paul, but before his request was granted it was deemed advisable to obtain the opinion of the Provincial Geologist. By this means the Government was saved a large and useless expenditure of money.

In 1850 an examination was made of the gold-bearing drift of the Chaudière, and the auriferous district found to extend over an area of between 3,000 and 4,000 square miles. Most of the year, however, was devoted to the collection of specimens for the London Exhibition of 1851, at which Mr. Logan acted as Juror. His visit to England at this time must have been for him an agreeable change. After a lapse of eight years to meet again with men like De la Beche, Murchison and Lyell, to hear from their own lips of the strides which science had been making, and in turn to tell of all that he had himself seen and done; surely this was a treat that none but the scientific man can understand who has long been well-nigh deprived of the society of brother scientists. For him, however, there was little relaxation from labor, for he toiled early and late in order that the