INSECTS OF NEW BRUNSWICK. 35 



Southern New Brunswick, they overlie laurentian and huronian rocks, and are seen 

 to rise unconformably from beneath the carboniferous rocks of the great central coal-for- 

 mation area of New Brunswick.^ They are everywhere more disturbed and altered than 

 the overlying cai'boniferous beds ; and Messrs. Bailey and Matthew have shown that 

 certain intrusive masses and dykes of granite, known to be of p re-carboniferous age, were 

 erupted subsequently to the deposition of these beds. 



The vegetable fossils of this formation are very numerous. I have catalogued or des- 

 cribed from it ujDwards of 50 species, belonging to the genera Dadoxylon, Sigillaria, Cal- 

 amites, Asterophyllites, Lepidodendron, Cordaites, Psilophyton, Neuropteris, Sphen- 

 opteris, Hymenophyllites, Pecopteris, &c.; the whole constituting a well-marked devonian 

 assemblage, distinguishable from the upper devonian flora of Perry in Maine, which is 

 perhaps newer than the Mispec conglomerate, and still more distinct from the lower 

 carboniferous flora of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, while on the other hand it is 

 incomparably better developed than any known flora of silurian age. Owing to 

 the richness of this flora, and to the fact that some genera and species of plants appear 

 earlier in North America than in Europe, some European palaeobotanists have been un- 

 willing to admit the devonian age of this formation, but entirely without good reason. 



That some of the species of the St. John beds, as Calamites transitionis (=C radlaUis of 

 Brongniart), are found in the lower carboniferous of Europe, is not wonderful, as in the 

 devonian as well as in subsequent periods the- flora of America has been somewhat in 

 advance of that of Europe. Still the prevalent plants in the St. John beds are distinctively 

 erian or devonian and not carboniferous. Further, recent discoveries of tree-ferns and 

 petioles of ferns in great abundance in the devonian of New York, and as low as the 

 Hamilton group, have shown that the devonian must have been even more remarkable 

 than the carboniferous for the abundance and variety of its ferns. A few additional 

 species of ferns found among specimens remaining in Professor Hartt's collections will 

 shortly be described. 



The crustaceans recognized in these beds are Eurypterus jJuUcaris Salter ; AmpMj)eltis 

 paradoxus Salter, a precursor of the Storaapods ; and a pygidium of a small trilobite, 

 unfortunately too imperfect for determination. A species of Spirorhis, which I have 

 described as S. erianus,^ occurs attached to leaves of Cordaites, and is distinct from the 

 common Splrorhis of the coal-measures {S. carbonarius or pus'dlus). A fragment of a 

 spiral shell may possibly repi-esent a devonian pulmonate, and will be noticed in a 

 forthcoming paper on the pulmonates of the carboniferous. No other animal remains 

 have been found in these beds, except the fossil insects. The conditions of deposit were 

 probably estuarine rather than marine, and the abundant fossil plants testify to the prox- 

 imity of land. 



It is difficult to correlate the subdivisions of the devonian in eastern Canada, with 

 those in the great erian area of New York and western Canada, owing to the absence of 

 the marine limestones, so characteristic of the latter. In my report on the fossil plants 

 of the devonian and upper silurian of Canada,'^ I have, however, stated some grounds 



1 Bailey and Matthew's Reports, whifh see also for details ^ Report on devonian plants. Geol. Siirv. Canada, 1871. 



of the strueture and relations of the devonian and assoeiated " Geol. Survey of Canada, 1871. 



formations, in southern New Brunswick. 



