4Q^ ' BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



E. DESCRIPTIONS OP NEW FOSSILS. 



Principal Dawson of McGill College, Montreal, C. E., visited the 

 interesting Devonian deposits in Perr^^ the past season, and kindly- 

 sent us an abstract of his observations, which is hereby presented. 

 The letter has been previousl}'- published in the Proceedings of the 

 Portland Society of Natural History, pages 99, 100, where may be 

 found the drawings of the new species to which reference is made. 

 Dr. Dawson has recently published what is really a monograph of 

 the Later Devonian Flora of Northeast America, in the Quarterly 

 Journal of the Geological Society, and gives the descriptions of 

 many new species, with notes upon those already known, amount- 

 ing in all to sixty-nine different species. The number is now in- 

 creased to seventy-five by these additions from Maine, and will be 

 increased still more in the future by material already in the hands 

 of Mr. Ilartt of St. John, N. B. Comparing the range of the same 

 species of plants in Maine, New Brunswick and Canada with those 

 in New York, it is clear that the more eastern deposits must lie 

 between the Chemung and Hamilton groups of the Upper Devonian. 

 It is very singular that simultaneously with the discovery by Dr. 

 Dawson of a Dicotyledonous plant, the Syringoxylon in this Devo- 

 nian series, Mr. Hartt should have found in New Brunswick the 

 wings of insects, both remarkable and unexpected discoveries. 



McGiLL College, ] 



Montreal, Nov. 26, 1862. j 



Dear Sir : — I had the pleasure, in August last, of examining the 

 locality of fossil plants at Perry, and with the aid of Jethro Brown, 

 Esq., who kindly assisted me when there, and followed up the 

 research after my departure, succeeded in obtaining several new 

 plants and better specimens of some of the species previously 

 known. With the exception of specimens of Cyclopteris Jacksoni 

 and Psilophyton princeps found by Mr. Brown in red sandstone 

 and shale on the Perry river, all our specimens were obtained from 

 the original locality mentioned in the last report of the State Sci- 

 entific Survey, which is a bed of grey sandstone about two feet in 

 thickness, and apparently very limited in horizontal extent. It 

 probably marks the spot where a stream llowing from the old De- 

 vonian land emptied into the waters in which the red sandstone 

 and conglomerate were being deposited. The plants are all drifted, 

 but thoy must have been derived from land at no great distance. 

 The age of the deposit of red sandstone and conglomerate in which 



