114 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
identifications have been made, appear to have been very fragmentary, 
and imperfectly preserved. 
“I do not wish to express my views as to the age of the St. John 
Plant Beds too strongly, but from what I have been able to learn from 
a study of the writings on and examination of specimens from these 
beds, it appears to me that they possess a flora indicative of a much 
higher horizon than that assigned to them, and that in reality they are 
most probably Upper Carboniferous.” 
This is a definite opinion, and from the Zuropean and especially 
the English standard of the history of Paleozoic plants, well taken. 
But neither England nor Europe is all the world, and the entire depend- 
ence on a European standard is destined to receive some severe shocks, 
as it has already. 
Dr. H. M. Ami, the Assistant Palæontologist of the Geological 
Survey of Canada, has followed in the wake of the above-named phyto- 
geologists, but has conceded so far to his fellow members of that Survey 
(Messrs. Fletcher and Ells) that he makes these plant beds Lower 
Carboniferous, or as he elsewhere calls them, Eo-Carboniferous. 
It may be noted that the opinions of the three paleontologists is 
based on the composition of the flora alone, as determined from Euro- 
pean or Pennsylvanian standards, without regard to the analysis and 
determinations of Sir Wm. Dawson, and without an investigation of the 
published stratigraphical facts that contravene this view. In other 
words, the evidence of stratigraphy which separate the St. John plant 
beds from the Millstone grit and the coal measures is completely 
ignored ; and so also is the regional metamorphism which the first 
has undergone; and the question of comparative age is made to turn 
entirely upon the composition of the flora. Before analyzing the latter 
it may be well to offer a few remarks on the geological conditions which 
make it impossible to classify this flora in the Carboniferous System. 
It must be shown that the work of all the stratigraphers from Gesner to 
Ells? was wrong in placing the St. John plant beds below the Carboni- 
ferous, before the contention of the palæophytologists can be maintained. 
A brief statement of the argument for the pre-Carboniferous age 
of the St. John plant beds may here be given. 
These plant beds are a part of the Little River Group near and in 
St. John, and are in the northern slope of the main syncline of that 
group. The group begins with a coarse sandstone (Dadoxylon Sand- 

1 Dr. A. Gesner called the rocks containing the plant Graywacke or 
Cambrian, and stated that part were ‘‘imperfect coal measures ” ; Dr. Jas. 
Robb mapped them as Upper Silurian; Drs. Bailey and Ells recognized 
their Devonian age. 

