OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 225 



Let us remember that the St. Albans Group, even at St. Albans or in 

 the neighborhood, has as yet brought nothing certain to palseontology, 

 and that there are only doubtful indications which I have placed on the 

 " Lake Champlain section " as a halting-point or query. Without 

 doubt fossils are very rare, but let us hope that some day the cutting 

 of roads and opening of quarries will lead to their discovery, especially 

 in the zone which should represent there the Paradoxidcs beds. 



In the eastern part of the great masses of crystalline rocks in New 

 England and Newfoundland, the fossils of the Primordial fauna have 

 been found, indicating always by their forms, and their stratigraphic 

 positions in close proximity to the crystalline rocks, that they come 

 from the lowest parts of the fossiliferous rocks of the " Taconic 

 system." 



If these localities are classed according to their faunae, the only pos- 

 sible way, considering the absence of superposition and the great 

 distance which separates them, they may be thus described in a de- 

 scendinii series. 



»S'^ John Group, or Acadian Group. — In the town of St. John, New 

 Brunswick, and also very near its suburb Portland, in the slates upon 

 which these two towns are built, the Rev. C. R. Matthews found in 

 1862 fragments of trilobites, which have been since carefully studied 

 and published by Mr. G. F. Matthews, under the title of " Illustra- 

 tions of the Fauna of the St. John Group," in the Transactions of the 

 Royal Society of Canada, 4to, Section IV., 1882. 



Tlie first discoveries have been much added to by several observers, 

 and as the fossils have been gradually collected they have been pub- 

 lished, first by C. F. Hart in the " Report of the Geological Survey 

 of New Brunswick" (1865) carried on under Prof. L. W. Bailey, 

 and in the " Acadian Geology " (1868) of Principal Dawson, then by 

 Billings and Matthews. The following is the list of fossils. 



Paradoxides, 7 species or varieties; Conocephalites, 14 species; 

 Agnostus, 2 species ; Microdiscus, 1 species ; Elh'ptocpp/ialus, 1 species ; 

 Linffuln, Oholella, Orthis, Dlscina, Eocystltes, Salterella, Hyolithes, 

 and Orthoceras. 



It is pre-eminently the Primordial fauna of Barrande, " Zone des 

 J'aradoxides," with the certain apparition of a Cephalopod well rec- 

 ognized by Prof. A. Hyatt. The thickness of the beds at Portland 

 and St. .John is about three thousand feet, composed mostly of slaty 

 shales, flags, and quartzites, with red sandy shales and conglomerates 

 at the base. 



The fossils are found at two hundred feet from the base, and are 



VOL. XX. (n. S. XII.) 15 



