138 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



erus oblongus, the base of the wenlock or Niagara holds seven 

 species of graptolites. The still larger Stricklandinia of the late 

 Professor Billings is generally obtained from the second layer below 

 the thick four and a half foot bed known to the quarrymen as the 

 Nigger-head. This is the one you may remark lying so frequently 

 at the foot of the escarpment from which it has fallen. The Ni- 

 agara shales, seventeen and-a-half feet thick at Hamilton, contain 

 many graptolites, but they fall to pieces when they become dry. 

 There are, however, interspersed in the dolomitic shales a few im- 

 pure layers of limestone from which good specimens are obtainable, 

 as also the fucoid Buthotrephis Granti. The blue building beds 

 overlying, about five and-a-half feet in thickness, contain a great 

 many graptolites, and the two upper beds are rich in trilobite re- 

 mains, head and tail shields, but a complete one is very rare indeed. 

 Conularia magnifica (Spencer) and C. Niagarensis also occur, per- 

 haps in better preservation than in the chert macadamizing beds, 

 higher up. From the base of the latter, about two feet above the 

 limestone band, I secured the fragments of the great crustacean, 

 Pterygotus Canadensis, the predecessor of Pauglicus, of the De- 

 vonian rocks of Scotland. 



It would afford much pleasure to point out the position of the 

 most fossiliferous chert and Niagara-Barton beds near Hamilton. 

 The waterlime quarry of the latter is the only one now open, and 

 presents but few specimens, the fossils of the higher layers in many 

 instances, Trochoceras displanense for example, are like Guelph 

 shells. 



When w^ consider the very limited time at our disposal, and 

 that the Falls themselves and neighborhood have been the common 

 hunting ground of many thousands of geological tourists from all 

 parts, I do not think we should b6 ashamed of the small collection 

 we made during our visit. We may claim to have discovered that 

 the higher Barton beds at Lime Ridge, near Hamilton, are also re- 

 presented there, a circumstance hitherto unnoted. I noticed par- 

 ticularly two circumstances on our recent visit to the Falls. They 

 have been rapidly receding during the past twenty-five years, and 

 the body of water is very sensibly diminished since I saw them in 

 1867. I experienced no difficulty in approaching the part known as 

 the Horse Shoe Falls, over rocks formerly partly under water. 

 Despite the protection vegetation affords, the high cliffs below the 



