144 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
conglomerates of Upper Devonian Time, including those of the Perry 
plant beds. 
The area of Passamaquoddy Bay is the only one of any consider- 
able extent along the north shore of the Bay of Fundy where the Silurian 
rocks are found to lie at a low angle, and it was a district where in place 
of highly inclined strata of the early Paleozoic, a portion of the beds 
stand at a moderate angle, and are repeated by uplifts along fault 
lines. The whole area may be regarded as a horst which sank in com- 
plement to the elevation of the granite of Robbinstown, and formed 
a basin in which Devonian strata were afterward deposited. 
The coarser material and older beds of the Upper Devonian basin 
are found mostly on its northern and western sides and the center, is 
not at present visible being buried beneath the waters of Passama- 
quoddy Bay, would form the higher portion of the series. But a few 
outliers are found in the form of small islands in the chain of 
larger islands that divides this bay from the Bay of Fundy. It 
may be assumed, however, that the south-eastern border of the 
basin is in the chain of islands above mentioned. No marine remains 
have been found in the sandstones and shales of this Devonian 
basin; and the conditions of deposition favour the view that it was a 
fresh-water deposit, and that the vegetable remains were those of plants 
that flourished on the shores and hills surrounding a fresh water lake. 
The flora is of unusual interest as showing what is probably an upland 
flora of Upper Devonian Time. Sir Wm. Dawson and Mr. David White 
both remark upon the macerated condition of much of the vegetation, 
and it may have consisted largely of drifted fragments of a land vege- 
tation growing on the surrounding hills. 
But there is as much significance in what is absent from this flora 
as in its actual constituents. There is no trace of deltaic forms, not a 
Calamite, a Neuropteris or an Alethopteris. That these forms are so 
plentiful in the Carboniferous floras arises largely from the fact that they 
are some of the most important coal-producing plants of the Carboni- 
ferous Time and are usual companions of the Sigillariæ and Lepido- 
dendra to which the production of coal is more usually attributed. In 
this earlier time, coal beds of commercial value were produced without 
the presence of the first named group of plants, as witness those of 
Bear Island and the Donitz basin. The peculiar assemblage of plants 
of the Perry Basin was not a deltaic flora, nor does it show the abundance 
of Lepidodendroid plants that characterized cotemporary or nearly 
cotemporary basins further east. 
