82 THE CAMBRIAN. 



the natui-e of those which in Sweden have been named Eophyton* 

 and have been described as land plants. They are, however, of very 

 doubtful origin, and in my judgment more akin to those trails of 

 aquatic animals which I have named Rhabdichnites. This conclusion 

 I arrived at after a careful examination of a very complete suite of 

 Swedish specimens in London in 1870. Still, these markings are 

 very characteristic of certain Cambrian beds. They are, for example, 

 abundant on the surfaces of the slates of the Acadian group at St 

 John. Professor Hind has also discovered in the quartzites of this 

 group certain nodular bodies and markings which Mr Billings 

 referred with doubt to the genus Eospangia and to casts of Orthis. 

 The latter I have not seen, but Professor Hind has very kindly 

 guided me to a bed near the Waverley Gold Mine, on the surface of 

 which there are great numbers of the former fossils. As appearing 

 on the weathered surface of the rock, they consist of little oval 

 depressions surrounded by a raised ridge from which radiate a 

 number of raised lines sometimes bifurcating. These lines appear to 

 represent radiating plates or lamellte rather than rods. They are of 

 various sizes, from an inch to six or seven inches in diameter, only 

 the larger ones having the rays well developed. They present no 

 structure or evidence of organic matter, except that the centre 

 has a brownish colour, as if from the oxidation of iron, and that in 

 some specimens, differently preserved from the others, the rays also 

 show a rusty colour. The most natural interpretation of these forms 

 would seem to be that they consist of a central axis or central cavity 

 surrounded with vertical radiating plates, sometimes splitting into 

 two toward the circumference. The central axis seems to have been 

 the original structure to which the radiating plates were afterwards 

 added. Some specimens seem to indicate that the larger specimens 

 were ultimately broken down into irregular groups of plates and 

 separ te plates. The material would seem to have been organic, and 

 probably very perishable. These objects are no doubt those which 

 Billings referred with doubt to his genus Eospongia ; but they have 

 no structures warranting such a reference, though they might well 

 be compared with the problematical object from the Eophyton sand- 

 stone of Sweden described by Linnarson under the name Astylospongia 

 radlata. To me they appear to be fucoids with radiating fronds, allied in 

 form at least to Hall's Phytopsis from the Bird's-eye Limestone, or to 

 Linnarson's ScotoUthus from the Eophyton sandstone. Similar objects 

 are abundant on the surfaces of the sandstones of the Quebec group at 

 Metis, and they are there associated with a spiral Arenicolites allied 

 *■ Report of Geological Survey, 1870. 



