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SUMMARY OF RECENT RESEARCHES 



ON THE 



PALAEONTOLOGY OF THE PROVINCE OF ONTARIO, 



With Bbief Descriptions of some New Gknera. 



BY H. ALLEYNE NICHOLSON, M.D., D. Sc, M.A., F.R.S.E., 



Professor of Natural History in University College, Toronto. 



I propose this evening to bring before tlie Institute tlie results of 

 some inquiries into the Palseontology of Ontaiio, which I was 

 enabled, chiefly by the liberality of the Government of the Province, 

 to carry out during the last summer. In the course of these 

 inquiries I investigated, more or less carefully, the Clinton, Medina, 

 l^iagara, Gruelph, Corniferous and Hamilton Formations ; but it was 

 to the two la,tter that my efforts were especially directed, and it is 

 to these that I shall entirely restrict my remarks to-night. 



The time and means at my disposal being both limited, I thought 

 it advisable rather to make a careful and prolonged examination of 

 the fauna of a limited district than to make less exhaustive collec- 

 tions from a wider area and from more scattered localities. In 

 accordance with this view, I repeatedly and very carefully exammed the 

 various fossiliferous localities in the Corniferous Limestone of Wain- 

 fleet, Humberstone and Bertie, in the County of Welland, on the 

 North Shore of Lake Erie. I also visited more hurriedly the same 

 deposits further to the west, as they occur in the Townships of Oneida 

 and Walpole, in the County of Haldimand. And, lastly, I examined 

 the Hamilton Formation in the Townships of Bosanquet and South 

 Williams. 



The American geologists, especially Messrs. Hall, Meek and 

 Worthen, have noticed the occurrence in some instances in Western 

 Ontario of Devonian fossils which are known to occur in the United 

 States. The only detailed account, however, which we possess of the 

 Devonian Fossils of Canada West is contained in a series of admirable^ 

 papers published some years ago in our Journal by Mr. Billings^ 

 {Canadian Journal, New Series, vols, iv., v. and vi.) In these 



