SECTION IV. 1882. inSze gl Trans. Roy. Soc. CANADA. 
en of the Fauna of the St. John Group. 
By G. F. MATTHEW, M.A. 
(Read May 25th, 1882.) 
No. 1.—THE PARADOXIDES. 
Their History. 
Two decades have now elapsed since the discovery of trilobites in the slates near the 
city of St. John, New Brunswick, Canada. The preliminary notice of these fossils by the 
late Professor C. F. Hartt appeared in the report of the geological survey of New Bruns- 
wick (1865) carried on under Prof. L. W. Bailey, and descriptions of the species appeared a 
little later in Principal Dawson’s “Acadian Geology ” (1868). Since that time the structure 
of the region in which these fossils were found has been worked out by officers of the 
Geological Survey of Canada, so that the conditions under which the primordial fauna 
existed in Acadia are now better known than when the first explorations were made. The 
knowledge of the geological structure of the region, thus acquired, is embodied in various 
reports of the Geological Survey, and especially in those of 1870-1 and 1878-9, and the map 
which accompanies the latter report. 
From these reports and from the map it will be seen that the strata of the St. John 
group fill a number of narrow, trough-like basins, lying between the Bay of Fundy and 
the central Carboniferous area of New Brunswick. Of these basins, that on which the city 
of St. John is situated is the most important, and it is here also that the life of the 
period can be studied to the best advantage. The St. John basin lies diagonally across 
the ridges of Huronian rock that are found in the eastern part of St. John county; and 
touches the ridge of Laurentian rocks that divides this county from King’s. As might 
naturally be expected the coarser sediments found at the base of the St. John group are 
largely derived from those older rocks, chiefly the Huronian ; and the line of division 
between it (the St. John group) and the Huronian Formation is marked by conglomerates 
of mechanical origin which shew no trace of the hardening process by which the Huronian 
conglomerates and breccias have been so firmly cemented. 
The conglomerates of the St. John group are most fully developed in the eastern part 
of the St. John basin, under the lee of the high ranges of Huronian hills which exist in 
that direction. In Portland and the city of St. John, at the western end of the basin 
the following section represents the succession of members in this group in ascending 
order :— 
