Post-Pliocene Deposits of the St. Lawrence. 37 



III. Land Plants. 



I am indebted to Andrew Dickson, Esq., for the opportunity of 

 studying a large number of nodules containing plants, collected 

 by him at Green's Creek, on the Ottawa. They contain numerous 

 vegetable fragments, which appear to have been originally distri- 

 buted over the surface of a tract of clay and covered by similar 

 material, a layer of calcareous nodules subsequently forming along 

 the plane of deposition and imbedding and preserving the remains, 

 which are very little changed, though some of them appear to 

 have been in an advanced state of decomposition before being 

 imbedded. Among them I can recognize leaves or fragments of 

 leaves of the Populus balsamifera — which seems to be a very 

 abundant plant at this locality — leaves and stems of grasses, 

 needles of pines, and a moss apparently of the family Fontinalece 

 or Hypnece* There is also a well preserved small dicotyledonous 

 leaf, which I have not yet been able to identify. 



The most curious point in connection with these remains is 

 their association with what seem to be remains of Algce, and with 

 shells of Leda Portlandica having the valves cohering. They 

 would thus appear to have been deposited in the sea and in deep 

 water. I observed something of the same kind in Gaspe Bay, 

 where, at the mouth of the North-west river, I found Leda lima- 

 tula living in dark-coloured mud containing vegetable matter, 

 much of it no doubt washed down by streams from the land. 



IY. Miscellaneous Fossils. 



Ophiocoma. — In my paper of last year I mentioned an organism 

 in a nodule from Ottawa which seemed to be the remains of an 

 ophiuroid star-fish. I have since found similar remains in the 

 Leda clay at the Tanneries, near Montreal. The specimens are 

 entirely disintegrated, but show the internal joints of the rays and 

 also the external plates and spines. From their form I judge that 

 they may have belonged to a small Ophiocoma, not very dissimilar 

 from the 0. bellis now found in the Gulf of St. Lawrence ; but 

 whether identical with that species, or with that found by Sir 

 W. E. Logan at Ottawa, I cannot certainly determine. I figure 

 some of the remains merely to direct the attention of other 

 observers to these curious objects. (Figs. 18, 19.) 



* SullWant, in a note just received, Bays it is probably not far from 

 Hypnum riparium, 



