NOVA SCOTIA. 571 



New Canaan. — Between the East River of PIctou and New 

 Canaan, in King's County, 100 miles distant, I know no Silurian 

 beds with fossils south of the Cohequld Hills ; and in the central 

 part of the province these rocks disappear under the Carboniferous 

 deposits. In the hills of Horton and New Canaan they reappear, 

 and constitute the northern margin of a broad belt of raetamorphic 

 and plutonic country, occupying here nearly the whole breadth 

 of the peninsula. The oldest fossiliferous beds seen are the fine 

 fawn-coloured and gray clay slates of Beech Hill, in which Dr 

 Webster, many years since, found the beautiful Dictyonema^ men- 

 tioned in a previous page. It is a new species, closely allied to 

 D. retiformis and D. gr-adh's of Hall, and has received the name 

 of D. Websteri^ in honour of its discoverer. It is most readily 

 characterized by the form of the cellules, which are very distinctly 

 marked in the manner of Graptolithus. A portion of a frond 

 is represented in Fig. 196. 



The Dictyonema slates of Beech Hill are of great thickness, but 

 have in their upper part some hard and coarse beds. They are 

 succeeded to the south by a great series of dark coloured coarse 

 slates, often micaceous, and in some places constituting a slate 

 conglomerate, containing small fragments of older slates, and 

 occasionally pebbles of a gray vesicular rock, apparently a trachyte. 

 In some parts of this series there are bands of a coarse laminated 

 magnesian and ferruginous limestone, containing fossils which, 

 though much distorted, are in parts still distinguishable. They 

 consist of joints of crinoids, casts of brachiopodous shells, trilobites 

 and corals. Among the latter are two species of Astroceimcm, 

 not distinguishable from A. pyriforme and venustum of the Nia- 

 gara gi'oup, and a HelioUtes allied to H. elegans^ if not a variety 

 of this species. On the evidence of these fossils, and the more 

 obscure remains associated with them. Professor Hall regards 

 these beds as equivalents of the Niagara formation of the New 

 York geologists, the Wenlock of Murchison. Their general strike 

 is N.E. and S.W. ; and to the southward, or in the probable 

 direction of the dip, they are succeeded, about six miles from 

 Beech Hill, by granite. They have in general a slaty structure 

 coinciding with the strike but not with the dip of the beds, and 

 this condition is very prevalent throughout this inland metamor- 

 phic district, where also the principal mineral veins usually run 

 with the strike. The beds just described run with S.W. strike 

 for a considerable distance, and are succeeded in ascending order 

 by beds holding the fossils of the Upper Arisaig series, which arc 



