28 THE POST-PLIOCENE. 



sub- Arctic or boreal shells similar to those of the Labrador 

 coast at present. 

 (/) Saxicava sand and gravel, either non-fossiliferous, or with a 

 few littoral shells of boreal or Acadian types. 



This table may be regarded as giving a complete statement of the 

 series of deposits in the Post-pliocene, not only in the Acadian Pro- 

 vinces, but throughout North-eastern America. 



Fossils of the Pust-pliocene. — Since the publication of the second 

 edition, the Rev. Mr Paisley has published in the "Canadian 

 Naturalist" (1872) a list of shells obtained from a railway cutting 

 on the Tattagouche River, near Bathurst, in New Brunswick, They 

 were found in beds of I.eda clay passing upwards into sand and 

 gravel. At the Jacquet River in the same district, the bones of a 

 small cetacean have been found, and have been described by Dr 

 Gilpin and Dr lloneyman.* They are referred by Dr Gilpin to Beluga 

 Vennontana of Thompson from the Pleistocene of Vermont. Simi- 

 lar bones have been found in the Leda clay of the St Lawrence 

 Valley, and have been compared by the late Mr Billings with the 

 skeleton of the recent B. catodon^ L., of the St Lawrence, with 

 which the so-called B. Vennontana is probably identical, as the speci- 

 mens above referred to, and examined by Billings, certainly were. 



In Prince Edward Island I have recorded the occurrence of Post- 

 pliocene shells at Campbellton, and Mr Matthew has found Tellina 

 Groenlandica at Horton BluflF, in beds probably of the age of the 

 Saxicava sand. Mr Matthew has also published -j- a valuable 

 synopsis of the fossils found up to 1876 in the Post-pliocene of New 

 lirunswiek, in which the number of species of IMollusca is raised 

 to more than thirty. He notes the important fact that the shells 

 found on the coast of the Bale de Chaleur are of more northern type 

 than those in the Bay of Fundy, which conform more nearly to the 

 assemblage found in these deposits on the New England coasts, so 

 that the existing geographical regions were already to some extent 

 established on the coast of North America in the period of the Upper 

 Leda clay. 



5. THE TRIAS. 



The principal addition to our knowledge of this formation is that 

 contained in the Report by Dr Harrington and myself published in 

 1871. 1 In this we separated as Upper Carboniferous, or " Permo- 



* Trans. Nova Scotia Institute, vol. iii. f Canadian Naturalist, vol. viii. 



t Keport on the Geological Structure and Mineral Eesources of Prince Edward 

 Island — Dawson & Harrington. 



