•32 BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



tjuite common in the Dadoxylon Sandstone in some places, and 

 Sii- "Wm. Dawson has described one from the extension of these 

 heds on the opposite side of the liarbor, under the name nf 

 S. pnlpehra. 



In connection with the plant remains (l)ut not in the same 

 beds) Dr. Gesner speaks of having discovered two small veins of 

 (inthracite coal in soft, fine grained clay slate. These slates 

 were divided into layers of from lialf an inch to four inches in 

 thickness, and were found at a small creek near the new 

 Penitentiary. He speaks of the slate rock appearing in cliffs on 

 the shore where the strata readil}'^ decompose. From these 

 indications I conclude that this " anthi-acite " came fi'om the 

 Hne black shales of the St. John group, whicli are well exposed 

 in a low cliff on Courtenay Bay, in front of the County Alms 

 House ; the brook which discharges here comes past the Pene- 

 tentiary. Much of the slate is black and highly carljonaceous, 

 and layers of it might resemble anthracite; but the existence of 

 true anthracite here is improbable, as the deposit is of marine 

 origin and of Cambrian age ; and its natural connection is not 

 with the Devonian sandstone containing plant remains, but with 

 the beds in which Dr. Gesner found the " terebratulite." 



This author found the fine slates to be devoid of (juartz veins, 

 and for this reason, as well as because they contained anthracite, 

 he associated them with the plant-bearing Graj^wacke sandstone, 

 rather than with the slates and Graywacke of the St. John 

 group, to which they properly belong, and which he found had 

 numerous quartz veins. Dr. (^esner laid much stress on the 

 presence of quartz veins as showing the antiquity of strata, and 

 considered the great abundance of quartz veins in the older 

 Graywacke group as a proof of its great antiquity. 



Dr. Gesner was thus the pioneer in the discovery of Cam- 

 brian and other pre-Carboniferous fossils in the terranes at St. 

 John ; that he did not reach the full significance of his dis- 

 coveries is not surprising, when we consider how little was 

 known in those early days outs-ide of the great centres of geolo- 

 gical investigation, of the distinctness of the several faunas and 

 Jloras included in the tiansition rocks. 



