THE 0ARBONIFERO1 3. 5 [ 



Ilccr and Professor Asa Gray also entertain with respect to the 

 Tertiary floras. Facts now accumulating from the observations of 



recent Arctic explorers, make it more and more evident that the 

 peculiar Lower Carboniferous flora was very widely distributed in 

 circumpolar lands at the beginning of the Carboniferous period.* 



Mr E. Gilpin, in a paper in the Transactions of the Nova Scotia 

 Institute (vol. iv.), has directed attention to the peculiar man- 

 ganesian limestone lying at the base of the Carboniferous on the East 

 River of Pictou, and very distinct in character from the great bed 

 of light -coloured limestone (Lithostrotion Limestone of Acadian 

 Geology), lying above, and the still higher gray limestones. In my 

 tabular arrangement of the Lower Carboniferous limestones (Ac. 

 Geol., p. 281), I have not separated this lower bed, as it has no 

 distinctness with regard to fossils ; but its wide distribution and 

 metalliferous character would now induce me to follow Mr Gilpin's 

 arrangement, and recognise it as a separate subdivision. It reappears 

 in Pictou County in New Lairg, and is represented elsewhere by the 

 black limestone of Plaister Cove, Cape Breton, the " Black Rock " at 

 the mouth of the Shubenacadie and the manganiferous limestone of 

 Walton and Teny Cape. It is not improbable that the manganese in 

 these limestones may be derived from the decomposition of volcanic 

 debris proceeding from the contemporaneous igneous vents which 

 produced the Lower Carboniferous traps. Its origin may thus be 

 similar to that to which the manganesian nodules found so abun- 

 dantly in the deep-sea dredgings of the " Challenger " have been 

 attributed. 



New Carboniferous Fossils. 



In addition to the Report on the Lower Carboniferous and Mill- 

 stone-grit plants already referred to, which gives a nearly com- 

 plete view of this interesting flora as far as known up to 1873, I 

 may refer to a paper on the Relations of SigiUaria, Catamites, and 

 Calamodendron, in the Journal of the Geological Society for 1N70; 

 a paper on a remarkable Sigillaria discovered at the Joggins by Mr 

 Hill (Proceedings of the same Society, 1877), Mr Scuddi r - .s descrip- 

 tions of the five species of myriapods found by me in the Coal forma- 

 tion (Journal of Boston Society, 1873); Descriptions of Fossil 

 Insects from Nova Scotia, by the same author (Canadian Naturalist, 

 vol. viii.), and my own recent papers on a new crustacean (Geolo- 

 gical Magazine, 1877), and on a recent discovery of Carboniferous 



* See a summary of the latest of these facts in Geological Magazine, July 1>77 : 

 also Heer, "Flora Fossilis Arctica," vol. iv. 



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