346 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION C. 
Many are of branched or radiate type, and they are surrounded 
by pyrites which probably represents the sponge. The fauna is, 
therefore, an extensive and varied one, and it is evident that both 
Radiolarians and sponges had existed for a long time when the 
series of Saint-L6 was being laid down. Even if they are wrongly 
referred to the Huronian period, this great variety of form may 
be taken as good evidence that the ancestors of these Radiolarians 
and sponges existed long before the Mollusca and Trilobites of the 
Algonkian period came into existence. 
ALGONKIAN LIFE. 
In Nevada and Utah on the west, and in Vermont and New 
Brunswick on the east of North America, as also in North-west 
India, the Algonkian beds are overlain conformably by the Cam- 
brian ; but in all other known places, not only in North America 
but also in Europe, there is an unconformity at the base of the 
Cambrian, thus distinctly separating the two systems. 
In the rocks of Animikie, near Lake Superior, a shell something 
like Lingula as well as some obscure fragments of Trilobites and 
worm-like tracks have been found. In the rocks of the Grand 
Canyon of Colorado, where it passes through Arizona, Dr. Walcott 
has detected in a limestone, about 4,000 feet below the base of the 
Cambrian, abundant fragments of Cryptozodn, a genus—previously 
known from the Upper Cambrian—which differs from Stromatopora 
in having thinner and coriaceous laminz without any connecting 
pillars or pores. Four hundred and fifty feet higher up he found 
a fragment of what seems to be the pleural lobe of a segment of a 
Trilobite ; also a minute discinoid or patelloid shell and a small 
Lingula-like shell, possibly a Hyolithes. In North Vermont, at 
about 500 feet below the base of the Cambrian, he obtained frag- 
ments of a Trilobite and another so-called Pterpod—Salterella. 
In Conception Bay, Newfoundland, a patelloid shell—Aspidella 
terranovica—and worm tracks have been found in rocks under- 
lying unconformably the Cambrian. And the Annelid (?) tubes 
of the Torridon sandstone in north-west Scotland as well, probably, 
as the worm burrows in the quartzites of Holyhead, in Anglesey, 
must also be referred to the Algonkian. 
Just below the base of the Cambrian a more varied fauna occurs 
in two different parts of the world. In the Salt Range of the 
Punjab, Dr. Fritz Noetling has shown that there are four fossil- 
iferous zones underlying the Olenel/us fauna. These he calls (1) 
the Neobolus zone, (2) the Upper Annelid Sandstone, (3) the zone of 
Hyolithes, and (4) the Lower Annelid Zone. Also Dr. G. F. Mathew 
has described what he calls the Protolenas fauna from St. John, 
New Brunswick. It contains thirteen species of Trilobites belong- 
ing to six genera as well as Ostracoda. Six genera of pelagic 
Gastropoda, one (Volborthella) doubtful Cephalopod, seven of 
