NOTES ON THE GEOLOGY OF NEWFOUNDLAND WESTON. 153 



director of the Newfoundland Survey had in palaeontological 

 evidence, I will relate one incident out of many similar ones 

 known to the writer : In the summer of 1874 Murray wrote to 

 Sir W. E. Logan, then director of the Canadian Survey, saying : 

 " I have made my Manuel's River rocks Primordial; I am doubt- 

 ful, however, whether my stratigraphy is correct ; neither Howley 

 nor I have been able to find the ghost of a fossil ; could you 

 arrange in any way to send Weston down for a few weeks." The 

 result was that I left by the next steamer which called at New- 

 foundland, and a few days after my arrival at St. John's was sent 

 by Murray to Manuel's River where he got lodgings for myself and 

 indian guide. The following day I commenced my search for 

 fossils, and in a short time was rewarded by finding, in the gray 

 argil lites, the well-known crustacean Microdiscus Dawsoni, 

 Hartt, which occurs in abundance in the primordial slates of St. 

 John, at Ratcliffe's Mill Stream, and other localities in New 

 Brunswick. This crustacean, Microdiscus, is a puny thing, not 

 larger than the half of a small pea, but it told me a big tale 

 about the geological horizon told me that Murray's stratigra- 

 phy was correct, and that I stood on primordial strata similar to 

 those of St. John, New Brunswick. 



I may mention here that the term primordial, used by Bar- 

 rande and the late palaeontologist of the Canadian Survey, Mr. 

 E. Billings, is seldom used now St. John Group being thought 

 a better name for that extensive group of rocks. This Cambrian 

 division of the lower silurian of Newfoundland according to 

 Murray would, if found consecutive at any one locality, repre- 

 sent a thickness of 6,000 feet of black, gray and other coloured 

 argillites, micaceous calcareous slates and limestones, sandstones, 

 conglomerates and other rocks, some of which are prolific in 

 fossils, especially the iron-stained argillites of Manuel's River 

 and other localities in Conception Bay. The fauna is similar to 

 that of the primordial of St. John, Ratcliffe's Mill Stream, and 

 other localities in New Brunswick. 



Among the forty or more genera and species of this group in 

 Newfoundland Billings describes about sixteen species, some of 



