HAMILTON SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION 139 



recent visit I noticed a shot bad been fired in the blue build- 

 ing beds at the base of the chert, which disturbed the thin 

 limestone layer at the top, which contains many fucoid 

 impressions. I turned over one of the slabs, and, instead of 

 the plant expected, it presented (what I had never found at 

 this horizon hitherto) a very fine and well preserved 

 Dictyonema. Mr. Nichol informed me another Graptolite 

 was badly fractured by powder some months previously, and 

 showed me also a coral from the base of the blue building 

 series, which the quarry men call the sand beds. Fossils are 

 rare in the latter and generally ill-preserved ; yet one of the 

 Jolly Cut quarries presented some years ago a fine cast of 

 Strophodonta Semifasciata. 



It may be admitted that while the corporation quarry 

 proved so unproductive in organic remains, it had some 

 compensating advantages, since it compelled one to devote 

 more attention to the fields in the vicinity of the corporation 

 drain and brow of the escarpment. It enabled one to make a 

 more extensive collection of Niagara Sponges and Bryozoons 

 unknown hitherto. I think only for this circumstance I 

 would never have examined some of the fields from which 

 hay had been taken, and which presented a poor prospect of 

 success. Despite this unpromising outlook a larger number 

 of rare specimens were discovered there than in any year 

 previously, under far more favorable conditions. Fragments 

 of a circular cup-shaped coral had often been found in 

 former years, similar to the specimen \\o\v in the hands of 

 Mr. Scriven, but too imperfect for restoration. The forms 

 may mislead one to suppose it belongs to the grnera 

 Cyathophyllum (cup corals) of Goldfuss, but it widely differs 

 from that family and comes under the head Caleopora 

 probably. 



We were also enabled to devote more attention to the fli7it- 

 flake fossils of the glaciated Chert beds, which are so rich in 

 Bryozoon Cornulites and other organisms. It may be owing 

 in a great measure to the long continued draught in the latter 

 part of the collecting season, that its close was marked by 



