92 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
to be seed-bearing plants, and so have been relegated to a higher posi- 
tion in the Vegetable Kingdom, than that held by the humble Fern. 
While the plants of the Coal measures have been collected in great 
numbers, and their structure subjected to close investigation by emi- 
nent specialists in the study of Fossil Botany, only a few men have given 
close attention to the floras of the Devonian and older systems. The 
men whose names are most closely identified with the plant remains of 
these ancient rocks are Dawson, Haughton, Nathorst and Heer. The 
latter two are best known (so far as these ancient floras are concerned) 
in connection with investigation of the fossil floras of Spitzbergen and 
Bear island in the Arctic sea, while the first named remains as the only 
naturalist who in America except the Arctic regions, has investigate 
the well preserved plant remains or more ancient date, in a comprehen- 
sive way. It was the plant remains of Gaspé in Eastern Quebec which 
first claimed Sir Wm. Dawson’s attention, and later those of the flags 
and shales of the Little river group at St. John. The plants of the 
latter group proved to be of unusual interest, because of their variety 
and their resemblance in type to the plants of the Coal measures. 
Two floras, or florules of the Little river group, which however, are 
not separated by Sir William Dawson, claim attention. The older of 
the two is contained in gray sandstone beds and included dark gray 
shales which border the north side of the two basins in which these 
plant remains are found, but fail to be recognizable on the southern 
side of the basins, where it has been upturned and metamorphosed; it 
is there not distinguishable from the overlying Cordate shale with their 
accompanying flags. Toward the centre of these basins and at the 
western end of one these sandstones as such, are not recognizable, the 
group being represented by the dark siliceous shales, which there 
intervene between the Bloomsbury at the base of the terrane and the 
sandstones that correspond in position to the Cordaite shales. 
Everywhere the beds of the Dadoxylon sandstone have undergone 
considerable change and hardening, amounting in certain areas to a 
complete metamorphism, in which all recognizable plant remains have 
been obliterated. These sandstones are never “free stone” like those 
of the Coal measures of New Brunswick but when least changed have 
the grains of sand thoroughly cemented by interstitial silica; hence 
the dark silicious shale which represented them in the deeper water of a 
Silurian sea produce when ground up by the surf of the modern sea, 
not a mud bed but a beach of fine black sand characteristic of some of 
the coves along the north shore of the Bay of Fundy (as that of Black 
beach in Musquash harbour and Wright’s head in Beaver harbour). 
The appearance of the Dadoxylon sandstone and its contained 
black shale beds would lead one to infer that it was of fluvial origin, 
