382 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. (Vou. VIII. 
with the miocene deposits. Understanding by the Sanfernando beds, 
the lowest beds of the Naparima series, we find the alliances strongly 
cretaceous, as shown by the brachiopoda, echinoderms and orbitoides 
(see Proc. Vict. Inst. Trin., 1897, page 169). Hill regards certain beds 
in Jamaica as eocene. These are the Cobre, Moneague and Montpelier 
formations, and I have little doubt that in this he is correct. But my 
acquaintance with the fauna of those beds does not enable me to pro- 
nounce a decided opinion. Deposits called post-pliocene or pleistocene 
exist in various parts of the West Indies, but the aspect of their faunas 
is entirely modern, and the characteristic species of the miocene are 
absent from them. The Caribean miocene fauna is unmistakably 
different from those of the periods following it,and though there may be 
a few species in common, the expert will scarcely fail in distinguishing 
between the formations belonging to each epoch. Thus, for instance, 
the barbadian fossil fauna, of which a list is given by Schomburgk 
(Hist. Barbados, page 562) is certainly pliocene or more recent, and that 
given by Gregory, as furnished by E. A. Smith, is of a similar geological 
date, though I could not accept the cabinet-naturalist names of many of 
the species, nor can I agree to the distribution there given, which is 
made out merely by taking closely allied and representative species and 
regarding them as identical. But I have no space here to deal with 
such questions, and must refer to my paper on the Molluska of the Gulf 
of Paria (Proc. Vict. Inst., Trinidad, 1894, pages 119 and 141) and 
elsewhere. All I would here remark is that naturalists who can make 
out of one type of radiolarian about twenty genera and a hundred 
species,* and a dozen or twenty species out of one species of Adeorbis 
or Risoina or Amnicola, while they cannot see that Asaphis deflorata of 
the West Indies and A. rugosa of the Pacific are distinct, can scarcely 
appreciate the kind of evidence we have to offer on the subject of the 
connexion and separation of ancient continents and oceans. The 
practical effect of the inability to distinguish valid species is shown in 
the case of the determination of a formation in Tobago as pleistocene on 
account of the occurrence in it of a species of ark said to be determined 
by authority as A. grandis, a recent Pacific shell, the shell in question 
being Arca patricia,a species well known to usas a characteristic miocene 
species not now living in the West Indies. 
On my visit to Vere, in Jamaica, I found the rocks very much as 
described by Hill. The yellow limestone of Maypen is generally full of 
*For example, Ehrenberg’s Nasselaria, which probably represents only one real species, is made into 
about twenty-five genera and 180 species,and so with his other divisions. And Hakel has invented another lot ot 
names on top of these. And, as he truly says, anyone who chooses to work at the subject could greatly 
increase the number of forms. 
