106 Dr. Dawson on an Erect Sigillaria 



and apricot, of open wall culture. Now there is no such thing to 

 be found as a good Bon-chretien pear, or an Autumn Bergamot, or 

 a Burmese Spruce, or yet a luscious Bolman's Washington plum, 

 or a Greengage, or even a coarse Magnum Bonum ; and but sel- 

 dom will you find a good basket of the common wild red plum 

 of the country. I have also noticed a de(4ine in the vigour and 

 growth of several other plants, these last few years past, in com- 

 parison with what might have been seen twenty years ago. Then 

 I saw the gardens about Montreal produce enormous crops of 

 melons, with very little care or attention ; now it is uncertain if you 

 get a good crop with all the care you can give them. I have also 

 Seen good crops of grapes raised in the gardens, and have myself 

 raised at Mount Pleasant, good crops of the Sweet Water and 

 Black Cluster in good condition, in the open ground. Then there 

 was no such thing as the mildew, or the nip, as it is now ; nor 

 was that troublesome pest, the curculio, known about Montreal. 

 Yet with all these facts before us, it will not do to be idle lookers 

 on ; better to be up and doing. I would suggest that any man 

 possessed of land, whether little or much, should plant trees ac- 

 cording to his means, and let what is planted, be planted in the 

 best possible way, and under the best conditions of soil and cul- 

 ture. He may then hope for good results in time to come. 



These few remarks, hastily penned, are respectfully submitted 

 to the Montreal Natural History Society. 



Forden, 6th January, 1862. 



ARTICLE VHL — On an Erect Sigillaria and a CarpoUte from 

 Nova Scotia, By J. W. Dawson, LL.D., F.G.S. 

 (jPVotA the Journal o/ the Geological Society of London.') 



'I'he erect trees so frequent in the Joggins coast-section, 

 though often distinctly ribbed, rarely show the minute markings 

 of the leaf-scars in a sufficiently perfect state to enable them to 

 be compared with those of the flattened trunks seen in the shales 

 and ironstones. This, no doubt, arises in part from the circum- 

 stance that the bases of the trunks of Sigillarice did not always 

 retain their characteristic markings, and in part from the unfavour- 

 able influence of an erect position in coarse and often laminated 

 sediment. The specimen, to which this note relates, and which 

 I obtained in 1859 from a sandstone in Group XIV. of my sec- 

 tion of the South Joggins*, affords an exception to the generally 



♦ Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. x. r. 6. 



