96 



ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



ever, 80 far as can be ascertained, are local, and do not affect the general ar- 

 rangement, ;>xoe])t in so far as slips parallel to the strike may repeat the beds. 



The layers holding fossil sponges, to be described in the sequel, are 

 Been in low reefs or ledges of black and olive shale, extending along the 

 Bouth side of the bay from near the mouth of Little Metis Jiiver for about 

 a furlong to the eastward, and are quite regular and undisturbed, though 

 inclined at an angle of about 50°. The sandstone and conglomerate im- 

 mediately overlying confornuibly this band of shales is capped with 

 boulder-clay and sand, and forms the rising ground on which stands the 

 Wesleyan church, indicated on the map. The section given on p. 95 shows 

 the attitude and nslation of these beds, and is drawn from the church to 

 the northwestward. 



Before proceeding to describe the eponge-beds and their fossils, it 

 may be well to notice the overlying sandstone and conglomerate, and 

 similar beds in the vicinity, with the fossils they contain, and the rela- 

 tions of these to other beds on the Lower St. Lawrence. 



The upper sandstone {li in the section) is so hard that it might be 

 regarded as a quartzite, differing in this respect from some of the other 

 beds in the vicinity, as, for instance, those of Mount Misery and the 

 Lighthouse Point. It dips S. 20° W. magnetic, at an angle of about 50°, 

 and is about sixty feet in thickness, though apparently thinning to the 

 eastward. Its lower side is i-emarkably flat and even, and has been 



undercut by the sea. 



owing 



to the softness of the shale below. On 



its strata planes are many fantastic, radiating forms indented on the 

 weathered surfaces, and akin to those which in the Cambrian quartzites 

 of Nova Scotia I have named AstropoUthon} No other fossils have been 

 observed in it. In tracing this bed to the eastward, it is seen to be over- 

 laid by, and to pass into, a very coarse conglomerate, with an arenaceous 

 paste and partly angular or rounded boulders, some of them more than 

 two feet in diameter. Some are of a light gray limestone, others are 

 quartzite, sandstone and indurated slate. Some of the limestone boulders 

 hold fossils, and from one of these I obtained the following form;:, kindly 

 identified for me by Mr. Matthew : 



Pleurotomaria 'i 



Iphidea bella, Billings. 



Hyolithea (species). 



Branching organism (possibly a sponge). 



Fragments of various small Trilobites. 



Olenellus Thompaoni, Emmons. 

 Ptychoparia Metisaica, Wakott.'^ 

 P. (species). 

 Protypua aenectua. 

 Solenopleura (species). 

 Stenotheca rugoaa, Walcott. 



These fossils are all, so far as determinable, of Lower Cambrian age, 

 and must have been derived from limestones already undergoing waste 



' Acadian Geology, Supplement, 1878, p. 82. 



'•* First found some years ago in a similar boulder from the Boule Rock. Along 

 with it was found a small sponge, Trachyum vetiiatum, described and figured by 

 Walcott in his memoir on the Lower Cambrian. 



