No. 3.] NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 343 



Prince Edward Island possesses excellent sandstone for build - 

 ini^, abundance of brick clay, and large deposits of valuable peat. 

 The Coal Formation rocks underlie the whole of the Island, but 

 are probably at a depth too great to permit their profitable explo- 

 ration at present. Iron, copper, and manganese ores in small 

 quantities occur, but are insufficient for mining purposes. There 

 are beds of useful though impure limestone. Fossil plants, as 

 trunks of coniferous trees and leaves of ferns, occur in great 

 abundance in the beds of the Upper Coal formation, and a few 

 fossil plants occur in the Trias, among them a stem of a cycad, 

 the first discovered in these Provinces. The most remarkable 

 fossil of the latter formation is the large and formidable reptile 

 Batliygnatlius horealis^ an ancient inhabitant of Prince Edward 

 Island, comparable with the great Saurians, which have left their 

 remains in rocks of similar age in the old world. The boulder 

 formation occurs in Prince Edward Island, and in its upper por- 

 tion includes boulders which must have been drifted from Labra- 

 dor on the one hand and New Brunswick on the other. Another 

 very remarkable feature of the modern geology is the great extent 

 of sand dunes or hills of blown sand, along the northern coast. 

 For further details the author referred to a report recently pre- 

 pared by himself and Dr. Harrington, on the geology of this in- 

 eres t ing and important Province. 



After the reading of this paper. Dr. T. Sterry Hunt made 

 some commendatory remarks on its general scope and scientific 

 aspect, and pointed out that in this Island we have an example of 

 two rock formations resting conformably the one on the other, 

 between which a "lost epoch" (the Permian formation) should 

 have intervened, if the succession of rocks had been unbroken. 

 Dr. B. J. Harrington also gave an account of the peat formations 

 of the Island. 



Mr. E. Billings read a paper " On some supposed fossils from 

 the Huronian Rocks of Newfoundland." 



These supposed organisms, as they are provisionally regarded, 

 belong to two species, or at any rate present two kinds of appear- 

 ances, but their affinities are at present exceedingly doubtful. A 

 discussion ensued as to the age of the rocks in which these sup- 

 posed fossils were found, Mr. Billings maintaining (with Mr. A. 

 Murray, the Director of the Geological Survey of Newfoundland), 

 that they are of Huronian age, and Dr. T. Sterry Hunt, that 

 they are of a newer horizon, and belong to the base of the Pri- 

 mordial zone. 



