40 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



with certain plant-bearing beds found in the vicinity of St. John, New- 

 Brunswick. He also pointed out that in physical characters the Perry 

 beds strongly resembled certain so-called Lower Carboniferous strata of 

 Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. This lithological resemblance of the 

 Perry to those red beds, which had up to that time been regarded as of 

 Lower Carboniferous age elsewhere, led Drs. Bailey and Matthew to ex- 

 press the opinion in the report on the Geology of Southern New Bruns- 

 wick, 1870-71, that possibly the Perry sandstone group mighfc be a part 

 of the Lower Carboniferous foimation, and in the published map of the 

 St. John district they were, a few years after, so indicated. Subsequent 

 work on this area, however, revealed the fact that the red beds of Ken- 

 nebecasis island on which this change in classification had been largely 

 based, had been wrongly interpreted, and that instead of belonging to 

 the Lower Carboniferous proper they really formed a part of a series un- 

 conformably beneath the lowest recognized Carboniferous formation 

 ïound in the province. The later discovery of plant remains in associ- 

 ated greyish and black shales above the red conglomerates, similar to 

 forms found in the recognized Devonian of Gaspé and lying above the 

 massive red conglomerates and other red beds at the base of the Perry 

 formation, strongly affirmed the contention as to their Devonian age. 

 In this connexion the remarks of Dr. L. W. Bailey taken from his paper 

 in Trans. Roy. Soc. of Can., 1889, may be quoted. Relative to the organic 

 remains found in the Perry formation, he says : " In the fossil flora, so 

 well described by Sir William Dawson, its aspect is undoubtedly De- 

 vonian, but to the other rocks of that system as seen only a few miles to 

 the eastward along the l:sew Brunswick coast, it bears no resemblance 

 whatever, while both in the nature of the beds and in their relations to 

 the subjacent formations it does bear much resemblance to the rocks of 

 the Lower Carboniferous which spread so widely over other portions of 

 the province. For this reason it was in the map and report of the Geo- 

 logical Survey represented as a part of the last named system. On the 

 other hand it differs from the latter in the total absence of marine lime- 

 stones and gypsiferous beds usually found in connexion therewith." 



Probably the most important work on the Perry formation in recent 

 years is that by Drs. David White and Geo. Otis Smith, of Washington, 

 the results of whose observations on the fossil flora of the area in eastern 

 Maine were published by the TJ. S. Geological Survey, 1905. In this 

 report after a careful study of the fauna and flora of the area, the early 

 views and conclusions of Sir William Dawson, as published in 1860-63, 

 were clearly maintained as to the upper Devonian age of the rocks of 

 this formation, and their probable position as the equivalents of the 

 Chemung of the New York scale of formations asserted. 



