Section IV., 1890. • [91] Tbans. R. S. C. 



VI. — Additional Notes on Fossil Spomjes and other Onjanic Remains from ■ 

 Jie Quebec Group at Jjitfle Metis, on the Lower St. Latcrence. 



By Sir J. William Dawson, LL. I)., F.RS. 



With Notes on Some of the Specimens by Dr. (I. ,1. ITinde, F.,J?.S. 



(Read May 20, l»t6.) 



[I. Introductory ; II, Subdivisions of the (Quebec Group ; III, Little 



Metis Bay; IV. General Remarks on the Fossil Sponges ; V, Notices 

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



I. — Introductory. 



The present 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 u]» to 

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

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

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

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



The Quebec Group was instituted by SirW. E. Logan, and described 

 by him, in 1863, 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 difl'erencos in the deposits, and that the terms applicable to 

 the formations 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 records 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 



1 Geology of Canada, p. 205 et seq, ; Appendix to Murray's Report on Newfound- 

 land, 1865, quoted by me in Journal of London Geological Society, 1888, p. 810, and in 

 Canadian Record of Science, 1800, p. 13.5. 



