92 G. F. MATTHEW ON THR ORGANIC REMAINS OF THE 



" Little River Group. — a. Dadoxylon Sandstone. — The hard sandstones of this group 

 stand out above the older and hxter strata and are a vahiable aid in tracing the succession of 

 members. They rise from beneath the Post-pliocene gravel of Little River valley, where 

 the first [lowest] beds consist of hard gray sandstones, with beds of grit and layers of dark 

 gray shales at intervals, the whole having a thickness of 2,000 feet. The fossils are Cala- 

 mites transitionis [Bornia radiata] and fragments yielding discigerous and other porous tissues. 

 The lower layers can be traced four miles east [of the harbour of St. John], where they sink 

 beneath gravel beds in the valley of the Mispeck River. On the south side of the valley 

 the sandstones reappear with a westerly dip. 



" At the bridge over the Mispeck River the sandstones contain fragments of carbonized 

 wood. Calamités transitionis and C. sp? A bed of dark shale at the same place holds Cor- 

 daites Eobbii, C. aug ust if olia and a calamité (C cannaformis ?) numerous stems of ferns and 

 leaflets and broken fronds of two species (one probably Neuropteris polymorpha, Dn.) Beds 

 of gray conglomerate occur in the sandstones of this valley, and the thickness of the deposit 

 is much greater than at Little River and further west, being about 3,600 feet. 



" An outcrop of these sandstones was traced for several miles along the southeastern 

 side of the Bloomsbury axis [east of Cape Spencer]. Beds of dark shale in the sandstones 

 hold stems and other fragments of plants. 



" b. Cordaite shales. — At the north of Mount Prospect [four miles east of St. John city] 

 there is an excellent exposure of this division of the Little River group. By increase in the 

 bulk and frequency of the finer beds, the sandstones gradually pass into arenaceous shales of 

 greenish, gray and red colour, which frequently alternate with reddish and gray sandstone 

 and grit, the latter predominating east of this place, while the shales are more prevalent in 

 the western extension of the deposit. Cordaites Robbii has been found to characterize these 

 shales throughout nearly their whole thickness of 2,300 feet. They cover an extensive area 

 in the valley of the Mispeck River. 



"The upturned edges of these rocks, so remarkable for the abundance and perfection of 

 the flora which they contain, have thus been traced around a double [i.e., sigmoid] curve 

 from Manawagonis to Black River, a distance of more than thirty miles. 



" Mispeck Group. — Filling the centre of the basin of Devonian rocks intervening 

 between Little River and Mispeck River, and having a breadth of about two miles, is a group 

 of sediments in which no organic remains have been found, and which there is reason to sup- 

 pose should be separated from the fossiliferous strata below, although resembling the latter 

 in appearance, and equally metamorphosed [i. e., hardened, cleaved and deprived of bitumen]. 

 The lowest member is a coarse reddish conglomerate, having a red slaty paste filled with 

 large subangular tragments of a gray altered rock, like the lower slate of the Coldbrook 

 group, (Pre-Cambrian) ; it also contains fragments of reddish sandstone and a few jiieces of 

 impure slaty limestone. The conglomerate is overlain by thick beds of purple clay slate, 

 which by the accession of coarser materials [in the upper part] becomes a slaty sandstone or 

 grit filled with white [felspathic] particles. The highest member on the line of section is a 

 conglomerate holding fragments of slate and sandstone. 



" Lower Carboniferous. — In rear of the Post-pliocene plateau at Red Head, east of St. 

 John Harbour, there is a small isolated deposit of conglomerate terminating in a cliff seventy 

 feet high. It lies at the junction of the Cordaite shales and Mispeck group, and is much less 

 coherent than any of the older conglomerates of the vicinity ; this dip is opposite to that of 



