Dawson, SIR JOHN WILLIAM

Dawson, SIR JOHN WILLIAM, geologist and naturalist, was born at Pictou, Nova Scotia, October 1820. He studied at Edinburgh, and afterwards devoted himself to researches in the natural history and geology of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, aiding Sir Charles Lyell in his investigations in Nova Scotia in 1842 and again in 1852. He was appointed superintendent of education in Nova Scotia in 1850; principal of McGill University, Montreal (1855), and afterwards vice-chancellor. In 1882 he received the Lyell medal of the London Geological Society, to whose Proceedings he frequently contributed; in 1884 he was knighted; and he was an LL.D. of Edinburgh, &c. His address as President of the Birmingham meeting of the British Association (1886) was on the geographical history of the Atlantic Ocean. His Devonian and Carboniferous Flora of Eastern North America records the discovery of what he believed to be the lowest known form of animal life, the Eozoön Canadense of the Laurentian limestone (see EOZOÖN). In some of his works he combatted the Darwinian theory of the origin of species. He published Archaia (1858), Story of the Earth and Man (1872), Dawn of Life (1875), Origin of the World (1877), Fossil Men (1878), Change of Life in Geological Time (1880), Egypt and Syria (1885), Geology and History (1894), and Relics of Primeval Life (1897). He died 19th November 1899.