144 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
in certain beds of the older system, proving, for those particular beds 
at least, an Ordovician horizon. But while these facts, as being the 
best data available at the time, were regarded as affording sufficient 
ground for the provisional reference of the belts under discussion to 
the system last named, it was stated as probable, both in maps and 
reports, that older as well as newer sediments might afterwards be 
found within the areas thus referred. It is now known that such is 
the case. 
It may be well to note here that the view that a portion if not 
the whole of the belts in question might be of greater antiquity than 
the Cambro-Silurian was entertained long prior to the publication of 
the Survey maps and reports relating thereto. Thus in the geological 
map of Dr. James Robb, based upon the early observations of Dr. A. 
Gesner, and published in 1850, they were represented as Cambrian. 
Again, in 1864, Sir Wm. Logan, in a letter to Prof. H. Y. Hind, then 
about to enter upon geological investigations in northern New Bruns- 
wick, expresses his belief that these rocks may be a repetition of the 
strata occurring along the south side of the St. Lawrence, here brought 
up in connection with a great anticline, and again repeated along 
the south shore of Nova Scotia; and Hind, adopting this view, describes 
them under the name of the Quebec Group, comparing them with 
those portions of the latter which are now known to be Cambrian. And 
finally the writer, after a somewhat prolonged study of the gold bearing 
rocks of the Atlantic Coast of Nova Scotia, instituted a comparison 
between these and the slaty rocks of northern New Brunswick, asserting 
his belief that if the former are accepted as of Cambrian age, a similar 
view must also be entertained as regards the latter. 
On the other hand, evidences were not wanting that a portion of 
the strata included in the tracts under notice were certainly younger 
than the age assigned. to the tracts as a whole. Thus, even at the time 
of the publication of the survey reports, a band of fossiliferous strata 
containing Eo-Devonian fossils was known to exist upon the Rocky 
brook, a branch of the Nashwaak river, in the very heart of one of 
the slate belts, and at a point but little removed from the great central 
granite axis; while subsequently fossils of the same age, but with quite 
different associations, were observed by W. McInnes upon one of 
the upper branches of the Tobique river. The view entertained as to 
the first of these was that the strata in question were merely a remnant 
of a more recent formation infolded among the beds of the older 
series and therefore preserved from removal, while in the latter case 
no doubt could be entertained as to their resting unconformably upon 
the highly crystalline rocks by which they were surrounded. But 

