SECTION IV., 1882. MENT 3 TRANS. Roy. Soc. CANADA. 
IX.— On the Lower Cretaceous Rocks of British Columbia. 
By J. F. WHITEAVES. 
(Read May 25th, 1882.) 
The equivalents of the Upper Cretaceous Rocks of Great Britain have been recognized 
over a vast extent of country in the United States and in Canada, but until recently, with 
two doubtful exceptions, no deposits have been discovered in North America which can be 
satisfactorily referred to the Middle or Lower sub-divisions of the Cretaceous. The possi- 
ble exceptions are the so-called Dakota Group of the Western States and the Shasta Group 
of California. The Dakota Group is a local name employed to designate a series of sand- 
stones containing numerous remains of terrestrial plants, and a few fresh water or estua- 
rine types of mollusca. These sandstones, which are stated to underlie the oldest mem- 
bers of the Upper Cretaceous series both directly and conformably, have been regarded as 
probably synchronous with the English Upper Greensand. The Shasta Group is a 
term applied provisionally to strata of different ages, all of which are described as being 
older than the Upper Cretaceous and newer than the Jurassic. These deposits, which 
occur at various localities in the coast range of California and which hold a somewhat 
varied assemblage of marine mollusca, are believed in a general way to be the representa- 
tives of the Gault and Lower Greensand of Europe, but no attempt has yet been made to 
correlate them more closely than this with their foreign equivalents. 
During the past seven years, however, the researches of Dr. G. M. Dawson in the 
mainland of British Columbia and in the islands off the coast have resulted in the acqui- 
sition by the Survey of large collections of fossils from various localities, and by means 
of these we are now enabled to recognize the probable existence in that Province of the 
equivalents of each of the sub-divisions of the Middle Cretaceous, viz., those of the Upper 
Greensand and Gault, as well as those of the upper sub-division of the Lower Cretaceous, 
which in England is known as the Lower Greensand and in France as the “ Néocomien 
supérieur.” 
The Coarse Conglomerates and Lower Shales of the coal-bearing rocks of the Queen 
Charlotte Islands, and probably the Agelomerates and Lower Sandstones of Dr. Dawson's 
report, can now be shown, on both stratigraphical and paleontological grounds, to repre- 
sent the whole of the Middle Cretaceous, but as this subject will be treated more fully in 
an illustrated report on these fossils now in course of preparation, it will not be necessary 
to refer to it at any greater length on the present occasion. J 
In Great Britain the Lower Cretaceous rocks have been divided into two subordinate 
groups, known respectively as the Lower Greensand and the Wealden formation. In 
France the upper member of the Lower Cretaceous is called the Meocomien Supérieur and 
the lower the Neocomien Inférieur. Deposits holding fossils, which, in the writer’s judg- 
ment are probably synchronous, or nearly so, with the upper part of the Lower Cretaceous 
and which therefore indicate an horizon equivalent to that of the Lower Greensand or 
Sec. IV., 1882. 11 
