502 THE BEVONIAN PERIOD. 



in the hills of Mount Thorn and Mount Dalhousie. They are also 

 found in the hilly country of Pictou and Antigonish ; and the remark- 

 able mass which seems to project through the Coal formation between 

 the East and Middle Rivers of Pictou is of this character. Its rocks 

 do not resemble those of the Silurian series, and they abound in 

 obscm-e remains, evidently of land plants, which, though not certainly 

 determinable, resemble those of the Devonian rather than those of the 

 Carboniferous. 



Mr J. Campbell of Halifax seems to have been the first to observe 

 these rocks ; and I had the pleasure of examining them in his company 

 in 1866. The fossils which I obtained are stipes of ferns, apparently 

 of two species : a Pinnularia, and branching stems much resembling 

 those of PsilopJif/f07i, a characteristic Devonian genus. There were 

 also fragments of carbonized and pyritized wood, but not sufficiently 

 perfect to show structure. These plants were contained in a hard 

 gray altered sandstone or quartzite, underlying unconformably a 

 Carboniferous conglomerate in Bear Brook, near the Middle River. 

 I have received a specimen of laminated limestone, not fossiliferous, 

 from this vicinity, and which probably belongs to the present series. 



These somewhat unpromising rocks would afford a rich field to any 

 geological observer who could enjoy the work of unravelling strati- 

 graphical intricacies ; and there is no reason to despair of their afford- 

 ing fossil remains were they explored with sufficient thoroughness. 

 More especially the rich Devonian flora of St John, New Brunswick, 

 encourages us to hope for similar discoveries of fossil plants in Nova 

 Scotia. Collectors should keep this in view, more especially as, with- 

 out attention, such plants might be confounded with those of the 

 Carboniferous rocks. 



Devonian of New Brunswick. 



The belt of partially metamorphosed rocks rising from beneath the 

 Carboniferous on the southern coast of New Brunswick, was mapped 

 in my first edition as Upper Silurian or Devonian, but without any 

 certain evidence as to its age, other than its manifestly underlying the 

 Carboniferous, and resembling somewhat in mineral character the 

 rocks of Upper Silurian and Devonian age in Nova Scotia. The 

 first fossil from these rocks ever seen by me was a specimen of 

 Calamites, brought by the late Professor Robb of the University of New 

 Brunswick to Montreal when on a visit to Canada in 1857. Professor 

 Robb, impressed with the importance of the occurrence of vegetable 

 fossils in these beds, proposed to devote some time to their study ; 

 but his lamented decease prevented this intention from being 



