GEOLOGICAL SCIENCE IS INDEBTED TO CANADA, ie 
Of those upper members of the Paleozoic series with which I am myself most conver- 
sant, I shall not say much. Canada has taken the lead in the discovery of insects of the 
Devonian or Erian period. We have discovered and described more of the land plants of 
that period than are known in any other country, perhaps in all other countries ; and the 
Devonian flora of Canada is the term of reference and comparison for that of all other 
countries. New interest has been added to the Erian of America by the discovery, first made 
known by Mr. Ells, of fossil fishes in rocks of this age at the mouth of the Restigouche 
River, a discovery followed up by Mr. Foord, and by the description of the specimens by 
Mr. Whiteaves. The results are a Lower Devonian fish fauna characterized by Cephalaspis 
and Coccosteus and two species of selachians, and an Upper Devonian fauna affording 
Pterichthys, Phaneropleuron, etc., in all eight species. It is interesting to note that these 
faunas are associated with plants characteristic respectively of the Lower and Upper 
Devonian. 
Much has been done in the Carboniferous flora, and more especially in the discrim- 
ination of its successive stages, from the Lower Carboniferous to the Permian. To us 
science owes the earliest discovery in America of Carboniferous batrachians, the oldest 
stomapod crustacean, and the first known palieozoic land shells and millipedes ; and some 
of our grand coast sections and exposures of Carboniferous rocks have become as familiar 
as household words to the geologists of every country. 
Canada is not richly endowed with rocks of the early Mesozoic age, except perhaps 
in those western districts as yet only imperfectly explored. Our Triassic rocks and their 
associated trappean beds were very early studied, and though here we owe much to Jack- 
son and Alger, we have also done much for ourselves. I was amused not long ago to see 
relations of the trappean rocks to the red sandstones long ago established in Nova 
Scotia, only beginning to be applied to the similar rocks of Connecticut and New Jersey. 
Our Cretaceous and Tertiary rocks of the Northwest are only as yet partially explored. 
Still we have already done something to elucidate their structure. The work of Dr. 
Selwyn, Mr. Richardson, Dr. G. M. Dawson and Mr. Whiteaves, has thrown much new 
light on their age and distribution, and we have, I think, taken the lead in disentangling 
the confusion introduced into their flora by a too rigid adhesion to arbitrary classifications 
introduced into palæobotany in Europe. We can show in the Transactions of this Society 
the first clear and consecutive sequence of plants from the Lower Cretaceous into the 
Eocene, and the conclusions based many years ago on collections made in Canadian terri- 
tory, are only now being introduced to notice and recognized as correct in the United 
States. 
In this connection an important discovery has been made by Mr. Whiteaves in the 
study of the fossils collected by Mr. Richardson and Dr.G. M. Dawson, in the Queen Char- 
lotte Islands. Mr. Whiteaves, whose previous studies in English Mesozoic fossils entitle 
him to be regarded as an authority in this matter, finds evidence that beds of the age of 
the English Gault exist in these western regions, and that a portion of the so-called Jurassic 
of the western territories of the United States, is probably Lower Cretaceous. This fact 
brings the geology of the West more into harmony with that of the eastern part of America, 
which seems to have been dry land during the Jurassic period. I find, however, that, in a 
recent article in the “ American Journal of Science,” Mr. Whiteaves complains, apparently 
with justice, that while his conclusions have been only partially accepted, credit is denied 
