N. E. UPPEK SILURIAN. 69 



18. Bulletin du Musee Royal d' Histoire Naturelle de Belgique. Tome IV., 



No. 1. 



19. Meruoires de la Societe Nationale des Sciences de Cherbourg, Tome 



XXIX. 

 Catalogue 2 Partie, 3 Liv. 57. 



Total 97 numbers. 



The following were elected members : W. H. C. Kerr, 

 M.A., Wm. H. Knowlton, James Goldie. 



Mr. T. Nelson Dale read a Paper on " New England Upper 

 Silurian." 



Mr. Dale gave a general account of visits made by liim to the 

 well-known localities of Bernardston, Mass., and Littleton, New 

 Hampshire, under the direction of Prof Raphael Pumpelly of the 

 North Atlantic Division of the U. S. Geological Survey. 



At Bernardston, Mass., a bed of an impure crystalline crinoid 

 limestone, associated with magnetite, garnets, chlorite, mica, pyrite 

 and limonite, dips under a thin-bedded quartzite and a garnetiferous 

 mica schist which are unconformably overlaid by the Triassic Sand- 

 stone of the Connecticut River Valley. The limestone has generally 

 been regai'ded as Lower Upper Silurian or Upper Lower Silurian. 



At Littleton, N. H., a more or less argillaceous crinoid limestone 

 containing Favosites, Halysites, Pentaraerus, etc., and associated with 

 slates, some of which contain Trilobites, overlies a more or less 

 schistose Protogene, and is followed by a metamorphic sandstone. 



The fossils at this locality are sufficiently numerous to permit an 

 exact determination of the age of the beds. They have usually been 

 regarded as Lower Helderberg. 



Both localities are remarkable for the presence of somewhat recent 

 Silurian rocks associated with rocks or minerals showing a high 

 degree of metamorphism ; and it would seem that careful paleonto- 

 logical and stratigraphical investigations at these and similar locali- 

 ties ought to throw light on the age of many rocks which, on account 

 of their crystalline character, have been classified as azoic or placed 

 in an uncertain group at the base of the Lower Silurian. 



In answer to an enquiry of Mr. J. H. Hunter, whether any 

 specimens of organisms had been found in the gneissoid 

 rocks of the United States, Mr. Dale replied that he was not 



