THE TKIAS. 9 



in England. The latter were described by me, as early as 1847,* as 

 being intcrstratified beds, though this seemed at the time not in ac- 

 cordance Avith the views expressed by many American geologists, -j- 

 who regarded the corresponding rocks of the Connecticut valley as 

 dykes. I am glad to see, however, that Russel, Davis, and other 

 recent observers now regard the Connecticut and New Jersey igneous 

 rocks as, in part at least, bedded overflows. :|: 



Like the Trias of England, ours contains no important marine lime- 

 stones, and its fossils are limited thus far to a single Uinosaurian reptile 

 and a few fossil plants. In these it is far inferior to deposits of the 

 same age further to the south on the Atlantic coast of the United 

 States. In America, as in Europe, the Triassic flora and land- and 

 freshwater- faunas seem to have been of southern origin. 



The maritime region of Eastern Canada is remarkable for its de- 

 ficiency of Mesozoic rocks newer than the Trias. If there are such 

 deposits, they must be, like the Cretaceous rocks believed to exist 

 further south on George's Banks, still under the sea. It is only on 

 Greenland and the Arctic Islands that we find beds ranging from the 

 Lias to the Eocene, and these belong rather to the Arctic basin than 

 to that of the Atlantic. § In this respect the maritime region of Canada 

 differs materially from that of Europe, though it is noteworthy that 

 the extreme coastal region of Great Britain to the west is also some- 

 what deficient in such rocks. 



THE PERMIAN. 



In the previous Supplement I have used the term Permo-car- 

 boniferous to designate those beds, principally red sandstones, which 

 in Prince Edward Island and Northern Nova Scotia overlie the coal 

 formation and underlie the Trias. It would seem, however, that we 

 are now in a position to claim a portion of these beds, at least, as a 

 true equivalent of the Permian. 



As early as 1842 || the writer was able to announce the existence 



of Carboniferous fossils in these beds, and in 1845, in two papers 



published in the Journal of the Geological Society of London, to refer 



the whole of the Red Sand.stone of the south side of Nortluimbcrlantl 



Strait and a portion of that of Prince Edward Island to the " Newer 



* Journal Geol. Socy. of London, vol. iv. pp. 60-59. 

 f The late Dr Hitchcock liad in 1833 regarded them as overflows, 

 i Seventh Annual Report, U.S.G.S., ji. 463. 



§ For references see Notes on Geological Map of Northern Canada, by Dr G. M. 

 Dawson. 



II Notes on Geology of Prince Edward Island, llarzard's Gazette. 



