148 GEOLOGICAL AGE OF PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND WATSON. 



contains drawings of over thirty different varieties of plants, 

 but so indifferently preserved that not more than three or four 

 of them could \\ ith certainty be referred to their proper species. 

 Yet the group is readily recognized as distinct from similar 

 remains in the Permian strata below .... But these 

 [Triassic plant fossils] would not have been sufficient to 

 characterize the system if they were not associated with an 

 undoubted Mesozoic dinosaur, Bathygnathus borealis." (The 

 italics are mine. L. W. W.) 



In view of the considerations submitted by Bain, Dawson 

 in 1885 (Canadian Record of Science, vol. i, no. 3) wrote 

 thus: "The general result, as far as the subdivision of the 

 beds is concerned, would seem to be that the lower series is 

 distinctly Permo-Carboniferous, that its extent is considerably 

 greater than we supposed in 1871, that there is a well- 

 characterized overlying Trias" (italics, L .W. W.), and that 

 the intermediate series, whether Permian or Lower Triassic, is 

 of somewhat difficult local definition, but that its fossils, as far 

 as they go, lean to the Permian side. 



Dr. Ells, of -the Canadian Geological Survey ,in his report 

 of his observations made in 1902, writes as follows: "With 

 the exception of this fossil (Bathygnathus) from the New 

 London area, it may be said that all the available evidence 

 points to the opinion that the red sandstones and shales, of 

 which the island is largely composed, may all be assigned to 

 the Carboniferous horizon, or as some geologists prefer to call 

 them, Permian. 



In this somewhat uncertain state rested the information as 

 to the age of the latest rocks until 1905, when, in an article 

 published in Science (new series, vol. xxii, no. 550, p. 52) E. 

 C. Case, an eminent authority upon the fauna of the permian 

 beds of North America, disputed the identity assigned to the 

 New London fossil, and stated his conviction that the fossil 

 Bathygnathus instead of being the lower jaw of a Triassic dino- 

 saur was the upper jaw of one of the most specialized 



