94 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
shales and conglomerates containing the plants, which form the subject 
of this paper. Here we suppose that the red colour characteristic of 
the clastics of the Bloomsbury in the eastern basins, has been discharged 
through the action of the organic acids of the plants that grew in this 
district in Silurian times. 
Mode of occurrence of these plant remains and their supposed ecological 
significance. 
The plant beds which have been described above occur in beds 
which are well exposed along the shore line on the eastern side of Beaver 
harbour. On the western side of the harbour, south of the village, 
there is an exposure of the characteristic black silicious slates of No. 2 
of the Mascareen phase of the Silurian succession in Charlotte county 
These are the beds which stratigraphically are equivalent to the Dad- 
oxylon sandstones of the eastern basins (Lepreau and St. John). At 
Wright’s Head in Beaver harbour they are overlain by the gray sandstone 
of the next member of the Mascareen series No. 2, which at Back bay 
in the next basin westward contains a Niagara fauna, hence and for other 
reasons the underlying black shales are regarded as of Clinton age 
Neither these No. 2 sandstones, nor the underlying black shales appear 
on the eastern side of Beaver harbour where a deep cove (Thompson’s) 
and postpliocene beds occupies the space where otherwise they would 
form the shore and only the underlying Bloomsbury beds (No. 1 of the 
Mascareen) appears, the beds in this case being those that contain the 
fossil plants. The composition of the measures, and the fact that the 
base of the Silurian system is seen on this shore lead us to regard these 
plant beds as of Medina or at least of Clinton age. 
This decision depends upon the assumption that the various basins 
in which these deposits are found were practically continuous and of 
equivalent age, and have been separated by earth-movements since their 
deposition. There is this to say in regard to them that they in each case 
exhibit a parallel series of deposits, beginning with volcanic ejections or 
conglomerates or both, with finer materials intermingled. The effusive 
rocks are either massive, without visible stratification, or have been 
levigated ashes thrown into the sea and there worked over into stratified 
deposits of reddish and greenish tints. 
A quiescent period followed during which the principal plant beds 
of the eastern basins were produced; this was marked at first by a slow 
sinking of the land in the basins where these sediments were accumu- 
lated. Thus the land movements where these plants bearing strata of 
the Little river group were produced were similar to those which in 
Europe and parts of North America accompanied the deposition of the 
coal measures. 
