On the morning of Tuesday, 22d November, there appeared to be a slight alleviation of symptoms, but it was a temporary rally. Ere long it was evident that he was sinking. He was peaceful and happy, when he breathed his last.

The respect and affection with which he was regarded were well shown in the public funeral, which was attended by Professors of the University, the Lord Provost, Magistrates, and Council, the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, members of the Royal Society, Royal Scottish Society of Arts, Royal Physical Society, Botanical Society, Philosophical Institution, School of Arts, Merchant Company, Chamber of Commerce. His friends, the Rev. Dr. Alexander and the Rev. Dr. Cairns, officiated on the occasion. His remains were interred in the Old Calton Burying-ground on 28th November, and his funeral sermon was preached by Dr. Alexander, in the Music Hall, to an overwhelming audience, on 4th December-the text being, "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord," Rev. xiv. 13.

While Wilson's lectures threw a genial light on the facts of science, his writings contributed not less to extend and popularise them. Everything he touched became instinct with life, and was impressed upon the mind of the hearer or reader by associations. of the most pleasing and lasting nature. His collected writings will undoubtedly be an important contribution to literature. "The effort of his life." Dr. Cairns remarks, 66 was to render science at once more human and more divine. His heart was strung throughout in sympathy with the touching prayer of the Novum Organon, that all science may become a healing art; and his last public office was regarded by him with special affection, as ministering to industrial progress and happiness. No scientific writer of our day has so habitually and lovingly quoted the Bible, from his essay on Dalton, whom he represents as proving that God literally weighs the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance,' down to his last paper, which closes with marking the identity of Professor Thomson's astronomical proof of the evanescence of the heavens with the words of the 102d Psalm. He hoped to live to write a 'Religio Chemici,' corresponding to Sir Thomas Browne's 'Religio Medici,' and embracing amongst other topics of discussion the doctrine of the resurrection."

"To have moved, amidst the altitudes and solitudes of science with a humble and loving heart; to have spoken out words on

the sacredness of medicine as a profession and scientific life in general, more lofty than have almost been heard even from the pulpit, and to have illustrated them in practice; to have enforced the subjection of all knowledge to one Name, the highest in earth and heaven; to have conquered by faith in a life-long struggle with pain and suffering; and to have wrought out the work of the day placidly and devoutly till the night came;-these, in any, and especially in the leaders of science, are processes and results greater than can be described in the transactions of any society, or preserved in any museum."

We conclude these notices from the North British Review with a beautiful tribute of affection from the pen of his brother Dr. D. Wilson of Toronto, published in the "Canadian Journal," for March.

"Death has been busy of late among Edinburgh men whom I counted my personal friends. Dr. Samuel Brown, Professor Edward Forbes, and Hugh Miller, have followed one another to the grave within a brief period, and ere the past year drew to a close, Dr. George Wilson was added to the number of those who live only in honored memory. Dying at the early age of forty-one, when a career full of rich promise appeared only opening before him, and his mind seemed to be ripening in many ways for a great life-work those who knew his capacity and his genius regard all that he had accomplished as insignificant indeed when compared with what he would have done if spared to those years in which men chiefly fulfil the promises of youth. Yet what he did accomplish, amid many and sore impediments to progress, is neither poor nor of small amount. Nor is it a light thing now to remember that one whose years of public life have been so few, and even these encroached on by the ever increasing impe liments of failing health, has been laid in his grave amid demonstrations of public sorrow such as have rarely indeed been accorded, in that native city of his, to Edinburgh's greatest men. This was due even more to the genial kindliness and worth of a noble Christian man, than to the unwearied zeal of a popular public teacher, and an enthusiastic student of science. His loss to his university is great, but to his friends it is irreparable. In him the faith of science, and the nobler faith of the Christian, were blended into perfect harmony for no doubt springing from half-revealed truths of science ever marred the serene joy of his faith while looking at

the things which are not seen. Prejudice and falsehood, ignorance and vice, were felt by him to be the common foes of both; and pardon me, if I add, that no man I have ever known carried more genially and unobtrusively, yet more thoroughly, his earnest Christian faith into all the daily business and the duties of life.

When a man of such genuine kindliness and worth is suddenly called away in his prime, with still so much of his life-work seemingly waiting its accomplishment, it is as when a brave vessel founders in mid-ocean. The wild eddy of the troubled waters gathers around the fatal gulf, and a cry of sympathetic sorrow rises up as the news is borne along to distant shores. But the ocean settles back to its wonted flow where that gallant bark went down, and the busy world soon returns to its old absorbing occupations. But there are those to whom that foundered bark has been the shipwreck of a life's hopes; and to me the loss of my life-long friend and brother will make life's future years wear a shadow they could never wear before."

ARTICLE XV.-Notice of Tertiary Fossils from Labrador, Maine, &c., and Remarks on the Climate of Canada in the Newer Pliocene or Pleistocene Period. By J. W. DAWSON, LL.D., F.G.S.

(Read before the Natural History Society.)

I am indebted to Capt. Orlebar, R.N., for a small collection of fossils from the vicinity of Tertiary Bay on the coast of Labrador, a locality in which similar collections were made several years since by Adm1. Bayfield. They occur in clay a little above high water mark; but the species present indicate a considerable depth at the time of the deposition of the bed in which they are contained, so that it cannot properly be regarded as merely a raised beach. The species contained in the collection are as follows; those found in the newer Pliocene of Canada being marked with asterisks.

Balanus porcatus.*

Spirorbis vitrea, attached to shells.*
Sp. carinata.

Buccinum undatum.*

Aporrhais occidentalis.

Natica, (fragment probably of N. Clausa.)*
Saxicava rugosa, var. Arctica.*

Tellina proxima, (calcarea) *

Astarte elliptica.

Rhynconella psittacea.

Echinus granulatus.

Hippothoa catenularia, (attached to shells) *
Lepralia pertusa.*

The greater number of the above species have already been recognised in the tertiary clays of Canada; * but the following exceptions are deserving of notice.

Spirorbis vitrea, has not been named in my previous papers; but I now find, on comparison with the specimens from Labrador and recent examples from Gaspé, that it is this and not Spirorbis sinistrorsa as previously stated, that occurs in the tertiary beds at Montreal and Quebec. It is at present a deep water species in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and on the banks of Newfoundland. Spirorbis carinata has not previously been observed in the tertiary beds; but is common on the coast of Labrador and Gaspé.†

Aporrhais occidentalis, the American representative of the "Pelican's-foot Spout-shell" of Britain, and remarkable in the adult state for its singularly expanded outer lip, is a deep water shell somewhat widely though not very abundantly distributed on the American coast. I have specimens from Labrador, Sable Island, and Portland, where a very fine living specimen was dredged for me last summer by Mr. Ferrier.

Saxicava rugosa, occurs in the Labrador collection under the form described as S. Arctica by Forbes and Hanley. This form is not prevalent though sometimes seen among the Saxicava of the St. Lawrence valley deposits, and at present is I think found only in deep water. The intermediate specimens prove it to be merely a variety of the common species.

Astarte elliptica is the common Astarte of the Gulf of St.

• See papers by the author in Canadian Naturalist, Vols. 2 and 4. See paper on Spirorbes of the Gulf of St. Lawrence in last number of this Journal.

Lawrence at present. Great numbers have been dredged by Mr Bell on the coast of Gaspé in about 60 fathoms. Along with them are found a few specimens having the characters of the typical Astarte sulcata of Great Britain, and others having the characters of A. compressa, a species much more nearly related than the others to the fossil A. Laurentiana, though quite distinct. I can recognise in the collections made by Mr. Bell and myself all the above species or varieties, and in addition the A. Arctica, which I have found only in the pleistocene beds near Portland. A. Laurentiana and A. Arctica are without doubt distinct species from Sulcata, but different views have been entertained as to the others. The distinction based by some authors on the crenulated or smooth margin, and on which the species A. Scotica and A. Danmoniensis have been founded, is evidently worthless, depending as it does on age; but the distinctions of external form and marking are apparently constant at all ages, and do not shade into each other. Although therefore Dr. Gould and Mr. Stimpson retain the name sulcata for all our American forms, I think it admits of a doubt whether the same distinctions made by Forbes and Hanley in Britain do not hold here. Mr. P. P. Carpenter when in Montreal very kindly went over my collections with me, and expressed himself satisfied that we have the forms. recognised in Britain as elliptica, sulcata, and compressa, whatever their specific value. My impression at present is that compressa is a good species, but that sulcata and elliptica as we have them may be varieties of one. It is curious that while A. Lau rentiana prevails exclusively in, the St. Lawrence deposits, the modern species is found at Labrador; and very possibly, especially when we regard the more inland position and greater elevation of the former, this indicates a difference of age in the deposits.

The clay attached to and in the interior of Capt. Orlebar's specimens is very rich in the minute Foraminifera. It contains specimens of all the forms found in the clays of Montreal and described in my former papers, and in addition the following: Rotalina oblonga, Fig. 1.

Bulimina pupoides, Fig. 2.