^ 



t^BCTION IV. l.SW. 



[91] 



Tbans. R. S. C. 



VI. — Ailditionol Noti'S; on Fossil S/i'ou/rs nml athir Ori/diiir h'ciiitiiii 

 the Quebt'c Group of Littlr Mcfis^ aii the Loicit St. Ldirri m'l. 



By Sir J. WrLLiAji Dawson, LL.D., F.RS. 



With Notes nil S'lwc iif the Specimevs by I>r. (r. .1. Hinde, F.l'.S. 



(Rend May 20, 18JK5.) 



I 



[1. Intvotliu'tory ; II. Subdivisions of tbe (^uoboc Grou^) ; III. Littlo 



.Metis iiay ; IV. General Remariis on the Fossil Sponges; V. Notices 

 of the Several Species ; VI. Other Animal Remains ; Conclusion.] 



I. — Introductory. 



• 



The jiresent paper is a continuation of that on the same subject 

 contributed to the Royal Society of Canada in 1889, and published in its 

 Transactions for that year. It is intended to bring the subject up to 

 date with reference to discoveries of new species and additional facts us 

 to those previously known, and also to tix more definitely the age of the 

 beds containing the fossils, more especially in connection with the more 

 recent observations of the otttcers of the Geological Survey of Canada. 



The (Juebec Group was instituted by Sir VV. K. Logan, and described 

 by him, in 18t)3, as a peculiar coastal and Atlantic development of the 

 formations known in the interior of North America as the Calciferous and 

 Chazy membei-s of what was then known as the Lower Silurian system.' 

 Logan undei-stood that on the submerged continental plateaus and ocean 

 depths of any given geological period there must be local as well as 

 chronological ditt'erences in the de]josits, and that the terms applicable to 

 the foi'mations in the inland seas, which in times of continental depression 

 covered what are now interior continental plains, cannot rightly designate 

 those laid down contemporaneously on the borders of the open and per- 

 manent ocean. We now know that these last are the most general and 

 continuous i-ecords of the history of the earth, though the continental 

 deposits, depending on subsidences alternating with elevations, give the 

 most decidedly graduated scales of geological time in their successive and 

 apparently distinct dynasties of marine life. Hence the plateau deposits 



' Geologj' of Canada, p. 205 «;< seq. ; Appendix to Murra.v".s Report on Newfound- 

 land, 18(J5, quoted by me in .Journal of London (ieoloKical Society, 1HS8, p. 810, and in 

 Canadian Record of Science, 1800, p. V.io, 



