[maTTHEW] PALÆOZOIC ROCKS OF SOUTHERN NEW BRUNSWICK 97 
It is generally admitted that the plants of the Coal measures grew 
in flat marshy places, and that the coal originated from the decay of 
species that flourished on the rich lowland plains of ancient river- 
deltas of the Carboniferous period, and hence Deltaic flora would be 
an appropriate name for this grouping. Plants of this type form the 
bulk of those entombed in the Cordaite shale, and are to be distinguished 
from those of the Dadoxylon sandstone whose genesis we have discussed 
above. 
Some notice should be taken of the earliest or these floras, that of 
Beaver harbour and its resemblance to that of Gaspé described by Sir 
Wm. Dawson, for the two, though not contemporary, appear to have 
originated under similar conditions. Both begin with plants of similar 
habits. Sir William describes his Gaspé flora as appearing in the sand- 
stones that immediately follow the (Upper) Silurian limestones of Gaspé, 
and hence not improbably a seaside flora; the Beaver harbour plants 
also are denizens of a land recently reclaimed from the sea. 
In many living seaside and maritime plants the leaves are inflated 
and fleshy, when plants of the same genus living at a distance from salt 
water have comparatively thin leaves, as for instance Plantago. As 
regards the inflation of the leaves in certain plants of this early time. 
[Psilophyton?] Ellsi is a good example’; in this species the leaves are 
round when preserved in sandstone but flattened when contained in 
shale. 
Yet another group of plants which grew in this district in Silurian 
times under special conditions includes the stout trunks (Dadoxylon, 
etc.,) that are preserved in the Dadoxylon sandstone. Some of these 
have a considerable length; but owing to the high inclination of the 
strata usually only their ends are exposed, though sometimes a foot or 
two of their length may be bared. These trunks are found rounded 
at the ends, and some are split through the middle, as though they 
had been rolled and abraded on the sea shore, or in descending a rapid 
river. 
This group is small in the number of species and known only by 
the stems but they are interesting as the plants of an Upland Flora 
that have been brought down by rivers and buried in the sands at their 
mouths. Sir William Dawson has described one species and Professor 
D. P. Penhallow another. In the material which the present writer 
sent to Sir William many years ago he had found two species recogniz- 
able by pores on their cells; he also noticed that some of the trunks 
had concentric rings of growth, while other (smaller) ones belonged to 
species that did not possess annual or seasonal rings of growth. The 


1 Trans. Roy. Soc. Can., sec. iv, p. 191 (1907). 
