298 American Scientific Association. 



the Devonian rocks of Gaspe, — the Gaspe sandstones of Sir W. 

 E. Logan's survey. The most remarkable of these remains is a 

 Lycopodiaceous plant, for which he had instituted the new genus 

 P silo phy ton ; it is so preserved in the Gaspe sandstones as to 

 exhibit all its parts in a remarkably perfect manner. Many so- 

 called Devonian fucoids are merely fragments of this plant. The 

 Devonian flora of Canada also includes a conifer named by Prof. 

 D. Prototaxites Logani, a Lepidodendron, Nceggerathia, and 

 Knorria, with some other plants not determined. In the collec- 

 tion of Dr. Jackson of Boston, and at Portland, Prof. D., had 

 seen specimens indicating that a similiar flora exists in rocks 

 probably Devonian at Perry, Maine. 



The remainder of the paper was occupied with the results of 

 an extensive series of Microscopic observations on the Coal of 

 Nova Scotia, prepared by new methods. A number of beautifully 

 preserved vegetable tissues were described, and the following 

 general conclusions stated. 1st. The mass of the coal is of 

 gymnospermous or cryptogamous origin, principally from sigillaria 

 and calamites, and accumulated by growth in situ. 2d. The rate 

 of accumulation of coal must have been very slow. The sigillaria 

 were allied in structure to cycads and conifers, and it is chiefly 

 their bark and woody axes that occur in the coal. In a vertical 

 foot of coal we may have the bark of a hundred successive genera- 

 tions of trees. The climate of the coal-producing eras was 

 equable and moist as in the islands of the southern hemisphere at 

 the present day. The coal forests were dense and covered large 

 plains ; as the trees fell they gradually decayed, and a dense vege- 

 tation soon covered the whole mass. The Growth of sigillaria was 

 more rapid than that of trees of the present day of like size, 

 but their structure proves that they did not spring up in a month 

 or two as some have supposed. 



DEVONIAN GRANITES AND TACONIC ROCKS. 



Prof. Hitchcock of Amherst then read a short paper giving an 

 account of a deposit of fossiliferous limestone beneath graute and 

 mica slate in Derby, Vt. He wished to call attention to this 

 loc-ility, as he had found something new to him, and leading to 

 different conclusions than those commonly held. This deposit 

 occurs near Lake Memphremagog. He showed by diagrams the 

 granite overlying the limestone, and what was singular, the former 

 dipped down into the latter in veins and there terminated. He 



