SECTION IV., 1901 [118] Trans. R. 8. C. 
X.—A Backward Step in Palæobotany. 
By G. F. Matruew, LL.D. 
(Read May 23, 1901.) 
It is now many years since Sir William Dawson studied and de- 
scribed the plants of the Little River Group, near St. John, N.B., and 
came to the conclusion that they were of Devonian age. 
This was the system of rocks which contained the oldest land 
plants at that time known. Sir William had found these plants to 
differ from those of the Carboniferous and later systems and therefore 
naturally concluded that they must be Devonian. 
For a long time the reference of these plants, and the beds which 
contained them to the Devonian, remained unquestioned ; but of late 
it has been stated that this reference was erroneous, and that the plants 
are undoubtedly Carboniferous. Not merely that they are within the 
base of that system, but that they are well up in it. Mr. David White, 
a paleobotanist of the United States Geological Survey, for instance, 
declares that they are of the age of the Pottsville Conglomerate of Penn- 
sylvania, the equivalent of the Millstone grit of the Canadian geologists. 
While Mr. Robert Kidston, a well-known English authority on fossil 
plants, places them still higher. In a letter to the late Dr. G. M. Daw- 
son, he writes as follows :— 
“The question of the age of the Riversdale Series is inseparably 
connected with the question of the age of the plant beds at St. John, 
New Brunswick. 
“The species contained in the Riversdale Series are also met with 
in the St. John Plant Beds, where however a greater number of species 
have been discovered. 
“ Among the species mentioned from the St. John plant beds are 
some which I believe in Europe, certainly in Britain, have only been 
found in the Lower Carboniferous, while others have never been found 
in the Lower, but always in the Upper Carboniferous. Further, the 
great majority of the fossils is clearly of a coal measure type, and some 
I believe are specifically identical with coal measure species. The 
occurrence of coal measure and Lower Carboniferous, along with 
Devonian plants, in the same beds, such as is reported to occur at St. 
John, is so much at variance with what observation and experience teach 
elsewhere, that great doubt is thrown on the reference of the St. John 
beds to the Devonian, especially as many of the specimens on which 
