EARLY DEVONIC HISTORY OF NEW YORK AND EASTERN NORTH AMERICA 9! 



Ill 



THE DEVONIC FAUNAS OF THE CHAPMAN PLANTATION, 

 AROOSTOOK COUNTY, MAINE 



The Chapman Plantation is a tract in the northeastern county of 

 Maine, lying directly to the south and west of Presque Isle village on the 

 Bangor and Aroostook Railroad. At several spots in this area are outcrops of 

 sandstone and arenaceous shales, for the most part highly inclined at angles 

 of 40 to 45 degrees to the north or northwest. The presence of these 

 rocks and the fact that they were fossiliferous seems to have been first noted 

 by Professor C. H. Hitchcock in 1861,' but the fossils were first systemati- 

 cally assembled by Mr Olof O. Nylander, a resident of Caribou and an intel- 

 ligent, appreciative and competent collector. In 1898 the writer had made 

 the acquaintance of Mr Nylander by correspondence and had acquired from 

 him for the State Museum considerable series of these fossils. Based upon 

 this material, some description and discussion of these faunas, which were 

 then unknown to the public except for the reference above suggested, had 

 been prepared by me and I was not then aware that the same problem wrs 

 being elsewhere studied; but my work was for the time terminated by the 

 appearance of a paper in the American Journal of Science [March 1900, 

 p. 203-13] entitled, The Silurian-Devonian boundary in North America 

 /. The Chapman sandstone fauna, by-Henry S. Williams. This publication 

 conveyed the intimation that a fuller description of that fauna would follow 

 in some more elaborate treatise and the writer therefore laid aside his manu- 

 script lest he should seem to encroach upon the field of a colleague. Time 

 slipped along ; the paper referred to was immediately followed by bulletin 

 165, United States Geological Survey, entitled, Contributions to the Geology 

 of Maine, by Henry S. Williams and Herbert E. Gregory ; but this entered 

 into no more precise detail as to the faunas in question, the former publi- 

 cation being in effect an excerpt from the latter. 



These papers indicated the occurrence in the Chapman Plantation of 



1 See his report as State Geologist in 6th Rep't State Bd of Agric. p. 245*. 



