PRE-OARBONIFBROUB PLANTS. 



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roots, drifted by the agency of the waves or possibly by ice ; such masses 

 are often moved in this way on the borders of modern swamps on the sea- 

 coast. 



In the sandstones themselves there are great quantities of drifted plants, 

 principally fragments of Psilophyton, which are sometimes matted together 

 as if they had drifted in peaty sods, in other cases scattered loosely over 

 the surfaces, and often in very small fragments. The sandstones also 

 contain large drifted trunks and stumps of Prototaxites. 



In the coarser sandstones there are numerous bony spines of large fishes 

 CMachceracanthus^, and in some of the finer beds spines and bony plates 

 of smaller fishes, apparently of the genera Coccosteus, Ctenacanthus and 

 Leptacanthus. In one of these beds my assistant, Mr. Kennedy, was so 

 fortunate as to find a nearly perfect specimen of Cephalaspia, the first 

 found in America, and a new species.* 



Some of the finer beds also hold shells of Lingula, and lamellibranchiate 

 shells of the genus Modiomorpha of Hall. It is a curious point of coinci- 

 dence of the Gaspe sandstones with the old red sandstone of Scotland, that 

 there are in some of the dark shales containing these shells and also frag- 

 ments of plants, clusters of rounded bodies of the nature of the Parka 

 decipiens of Forfarshire, though of smaller size than the Scottish specimens. 

 When best preserved they appear as flattened globes with a depression in 

 the centre of each and laid close together in one plane. They are most 

 frequently attached to loose valves of bivalve shells. They must have 

 been soft bodies covered with a tough smooth membrane, and were proba- 

 bly the ova of moUusks or crustaceans. Of the latter, fragments referable to 

 Dithyroearis, Eurypteru», Pterygotus, Ceriatocaris and Beyrichia occur in 

 these beds. 



Prof. Hall has kindly compared the molluscous remains with those of 

 the Devonian of New York. He does not profess to give a conclusive 

 judgment on them, but states that their aspect is that of the Hamilton 

 group. 



The only remaining point connected with local Geology to which I shall 

 allude in these introductory remarks, is the admirable facilities afforded by 

 the Gasp^ coast both for ascertaining the true geological relations of the 

 beds, and for studying the Devonian plants, as distinctly exposed on large 

 surfaces of rock. On the coast of the River St. Lawrence, at Cape Rozier 

 and its vicinity, the Lower Silurian rocks of the Quebec Group are well 

 exposed, and are overlaid unconformably by the massive Upper Silurian 

 limestones of Cape Gasp^, which rise into clifls 600 feet in height, and 

 can be seen filled with their characteristic fossils on both sides of the Cape. 



• Described by Mr. H.Woodward in the Geological Magazine (1871) as Cephalaspit Uamoni. 



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