Notices of Memoirs — Sir W. Dawson — Pre- Cambrian Fossils. 513 



Report of the Committee on the Registration of Type Specimens. 

 Montagu Browne. — The Rhastic Bone-beds of Aust Cliff and the 



Rock-bed above it. 

 Prof. H. G. Seeley.— On the Skull of the South African Fossil 



Reptile Diademoclon. 

 Prof. H. G. Seeley. — Two examples of Current Bedding in Clay. 

 Sir Archibald Geikie. — On some Crush-Conglomerates in Anglesey 



"(seep. 481). 

 Prof J. Milne. — Report of the Seismological Committee. 

 A. C. Seicard. — Note on some Fossil Plants from South Africa (see 



p. 519). 

 Prof K. Busz. — On the occurrence of Corundum produced by 



Contact-metamorphism (see p. 492). 

 Report of the Moreseat Committee. 



Abstracts of Papers read at the British Association Meeting, 

 Liverpool, September, 1896. 



II.— Pre-Cambrian Fossils. By Sir W. Dawson, LL.D., F.R.S. 



f PHE author stated that it was his object merely to introduce the 

 JL specimens he proposed to exhibit by a few remarks rendered 

 necessary by the present confusion in the classification of pre- 

 Cambrian rocks. He would take those of Canada and Newfound- 

 land as at present best known, and locally connected with the 

 specimens in question. 



He referred first to the " Olenelhis Zone," and its equivalent in 

 New Brunswick, the " Protolenus Fauna " of Matthew, as at present 

 constituting the base of the Cambrian, and terminating downward 

 in barren sandstone. This Lower Cambrian had in North America, 

 according to Walcott, afforded 165 species, including all the leading 

 types of the marine invertebrates. 



Below the Olenellus Zone, Matthew had found in New Brunswick 

 a thick seines of red and greenish slates, with conglomerate at the 

 base. It has afforded no Trilobites, but contains a few fossils 

 referable with some doubt to Worms, Mollusks, Ostracods, 

 Brachiopods, Cytideans, and Protozoa. It is regarded as equivalent 

 to the Signal Hill and Random Sound Series of Murray and Howley 

 in Newfoundland, and to the Keweenian, and the Chuar and Colorado 

 Canon Series of Walcott in the west. The latter contains laminated 

 forms apparently similar to Cryptozoon of the Cambrian and 

 Archreozoon of the Upper Laurentian. 



The Etcheminian rests unconformably on the Huronian, a system 

 for the most part of coarse clastic rocks with some igneous beds, but 

 including slates, iron-ores, and limestones, which contain worm- 

 burrows, sponge-spicules, and laminated forms comparable with 

 Cryptozoon and Eozoon. The iluronian, first defined by Logan and 

 Murray in the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron, has been recognized 

 in many localities, both in the west and east of Canada and the 

 United States ; but designated by other local names, and by some 

 writers is included, with the Etcheminian and sometimes with 



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