150 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



Wm. Dawson come from this horizon. It may prove to be a marsh 

 plant ; it differs from any I found, and may be a new species. As is 

 the case generally, the fossils only occur in certain patches through 

 the bed. This I ascertained through experience, and I mention it 

 to guard you against disappointment. The specimens of this shal- 

 low water sea-floor in my possession now are exceedingly poor, in 

 indifferent preservation, and their sole recommendation is, they may 

 be considered better to display than nothing at all, to use an Irish- 

 ism, I have on a previous occasion referred to the absence of 

 organic remains in the red, green or mottled shales, and pointed out 

 that the explanation sometimes offered regarding their being deep 

 sea deposits offered no satisfactory answer, inasmuch as free floating 

 shells must have been interred in the muddy sediment sometimes. 

 For my own part I could never understand why the red Clinton 

 shales, which, perhaps, owed the color to iron, were so fossiliferous^ 

 whereas the Medina ones underneath could only display the mere 

 fragment of an alga, which, to the finder seemed doubtful. A red 

 Orthoceras, forwarded to the late Professor Billings, unquestionably 

 came from a gully below the capping of the Medina freestone band. 

 Probably it was washed down from the Clintons overhead, filling up 

 a natural void, and cemented by frost, which, from its position, could 

 not be dissolved at an earlier period. Anyway I do not care to 

 claim the discovery of an Orthoceras from Hamilton, Ont., below 

 our local freestones. When Dr. Jas. Hall, of Albany, recently paid 

 a visit to Hamilton, I asked him why the Medina shales were so 

 barren of organic remains. His explanation coincided precisely 

 with the views Professor Wilkins recorded at a late meeting of our 

 Association. Both arrived at the same conclusion independently. 



But why sea-floors ? Does not every fossil embedded in rocks,, 

 shales, mud or sand, point to the same means of accumulations — the 

 sea bed ? Well, no, not exactly. The term is not applicable in 

 many cases to the material or rocks enveloping fossils. Fresh water 

 streams, bays and lakes, may also put in a claim to the contribution,. 

 not forgetting the ancient and modern marshes to which tides had 

 or have merely occasional access. But doubtlessly in a general way 

 the objection has considerable force. So I had better here explain 

 that our fragments of sea-floors are merely selected slabs of ancient 

 Palaeozoic sea bottoms, thin layers of hmestone, sandstone, etc, 

 whose surfaces in nearly every instance were covered, perhaps sud- 



