464 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. * [Vol. vii. 



shaly partings, and weathering in some cases to a bright red. 

 The gray band, which is extensively quarried, forms an excellent 

 building material, and has also been used for making grindstones. 

 The shales are particularly poor in fossils, nothing but a few 

 obscure fucoids having been found in them. In the sandstones, 

 however, a few fossils can be obtained, but it is exceedingly dif- 

 ficult to separate them, on account of the hardness of the rocks. 

 Among those which I have found, may be mentioned Arthro- 

 phycus Harlani, Falceophycus, and Lycophycus, and of animal 

 remains, Llngula cuneata, which is not rare, Modiolopsis ortho- 

 nota, Murchisonia notoidea (?), and an obscure coral resembling 

 a Zaphrentis. In some places rain marks are common. 



The Clinton Formation. 



The Clinton formation is exposed along the side of the escarp- 

 ment, and having the Niagara overlying it, there are but few 

 places where it forms the surface rock of the country. As it ap- 

 proaches from the east, it increases in thickness, and at Dundas 

 is much more largely developed. It has a thickness of 78 feet 

 at this place, consisting of thin beds of calcareo-arenaceous 

 rocks, and some impure limestones, alternating with shales of 

 various textures and tints. During the deposition of these 

 strata there was a constant change in the character of the sedi- 

 ments, as it seldom happened that more than a few inches of 

 the same kind of material were deposited consecutively. The 

 sea was shallow, as is shown by ripple marking, and by quite a 

 variety of worm tracts, as well as by the markings of rain drops. 

 The conditions suitable to life, moreover, were more favorable 

 than in the preceding epoch. Of the fossils obtained here, all 

 or nearly all are likewise found in the Niagara above, and from 

 the material collected at Hamilton it is impossible to separate 

 palaeontologically the deposits of the Clinton epoch from those 

 of the Niagara. The Clinton, in its upward extension, has been 

 limited by a hard dolomitic bed, which forms the base of the 

 Niagara formation, and is sometimes known as the " Pentamerus 

 Band." 



The most curious fossils of this epoch are two or three species 

 of Lingula, which ar^ of a bright blue colour. They were first 

 discovered in 1868, by Lieut. C. C. Grant, in the dark brown 

 calcareo-arenaceous beds near the top of the Clinton at the 

 " Bluff" (a clijBf about a mile east of the city reservoir), and 



