18 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



and in the neighbouring province of Nova Scotia. The large area of 

 these rocks in Nova Scotia has been called the Maguma series, and 

 shows in its lower part an enormous mass of hard quartzites, without 

 parallel among the Pre-Cambrian rocks of this region. In Newfound- 

 land these rocks were called by the late Alexander Murray, the Inter- 

 mediate series, I suppose, because they held an intermediate position 

 between the old gneisses of that colony, and its Cambrian rocks. 

 But neither there nor in New Brunswick do they exhibit the great 

 masses of quartzites that are found in the Maguma series of Nova 

 Scotia. 



Northeastward of the Cambrian area of southern New Brunswick 

 (in which lies the chief basin of the Cordaite deposits) on the high- 

 lands bordering the Bay of Fundy on its northern side, one comes on 

 Pre-Cambrian rocks. There is a prominent belt of sericic mica schist 

 and argillites that are in great masses and serve for an elevated border 

 to the later deposits on the north side of the Bay of Fundy, as the 

 Maguma quartzite do to those of the opposite shore of that bay. 

 These may be of same age as the latter, but different in appearance 

 owing to the deposit of sand of that age having ceased in this northerly 

 direction^ 



Another peculiarity of this delta is that there is no marine inter- 

 calations near St. John to tell, by means of the organisms of the shal- 

 low seas, what the geological age of the delta really is. And so far as 

 the creatures of the land are concerned we can have little help, as 

 such for Silurian times are yet quite inadequate. But if we extend our 

 survey of these rocks westward toward the broad area of marine 

 Silurian strata that spread off in that direction, we do get some help. 

 In that direction we find them cut up into several narrow basins that 

 have portions of the Silurian sedirnents, none so complete as the 

 Little River basin, but in this direction we soon find that we have 

 reached the marine border. 



One important factor in determining the true position of these 

 sediments is the uncomformable superposition of the Devono-Carbon- 

 iferous series, which though intimately connected with Little River 

 sediments in its distribution is manifestly of later date, the flora of 

 these later beds, first described by Sir J. W. Dawson and later by Mr. 

 David White, is recognized as Upper Devonian. These plants were 

 found in sandstone beds at Perry, near Eastport, in the State of Maine, 



^ A similar reduction in bulk of the middle member of the St. John group (Cam- 

 brian) may be seen at the Kennebecasis Valley, where that member of the series has 

 shrunk to about one-eighth of the bulk it has in the central area at the city of St. 

 John; and yet there are only a few miles between the two basins of Cambrian strata. 



