REVIEWS — GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 331 



Following Barrande, McCoy, and other naturalists, Mr. Billings 

 discards the genus Ormoceras, and places all the straight forms of the 

 Orthocei^atidcB, whether with simple or with beaded siphuncles, under 

 the single genus Orthoceras. Until the publication of this Report, we 

 confess to have held an opposite view. Our objection to this union 

 was chiefly founded on the following consideration, viz. : — that 

 amongst the curved or nautiloidal types, no examples were presented of 

 a departure from the simple or at least the non-inflated form of 

 siphuncle. The nautilus, it is true, has not yet been found to exhibit 

 the beaded siphuncle in any of its species, but Mr. Billings has 

 broken down the objection alluded to above, by citing examples of 

 other curved forms with this character of siphuncle, preserved in the 

 collections of the survey. 



The specimens [of the old Huronia vertebralis of Stokes, re-named Orthoceras 

 Canadense by Mr. Billings] in the collections of the Geological Survey of Canada 

 show a regular transitional series, from those with siphons scarcely at all inflated 

 to those with annulations an inch and a-half in diameter. The segments are also 

 either fusiform, globular, oblate, spheroidal, nummuloid, turbinate, or more swol- 

 len at one side of the chamber than at the other. Some of these forms are also 

 apparent in two other genera. Thus in Gyroceras magnijicum the siphon between 

 the septa is dilated into a series of fusiforms beads ; in Cyrtoceras regulars the 

 expansions are globular but scarcely two-thirds of a line in diameter ; in Cyrtoce- 

 ras suhturhinatum globular, four lines in diameter, and exhibiting radiatino- lamel- 

 Ise ; while in one fragment of a species of Cyrtoceras, not described, it is expanded 

 in the upper part of the chamber, and tapering below, exhibits a form very like 

 Huronia. 



The curious tree-like fossils, the Beatricea, first discovered by Mr, 

 Richardson, in the Island of Anticosti, and subsequently in the fossili- 

 iferous limestone of Lake St. John, north of Quebec, are referred pro- 

 visionally by Mr. Billings to the vegetable kingdom, but their true 

 nature is still uncertain. The fossils associated with them are opposed 

 to the view of a vegetable origin ; unless we look upon them as 

 gigantic fucoids ; or as belonging to some extinct marine type of com- 

 paratively high organization. Their true place is probably amongst 

 the corals. No description of these curious forms having yet ap- 

 peared in the Journal, we quote the following, as given by Mr. 



Billings : 



Genus Beateioea. 



The above generic name is proposed for certain tree-like fossils collected in the 

 Lower and Middle Silurian rocks of Anticosti. They consist of nearly straight 

 stems from one to fourteen inches in diameter, perforated throughout by a cylin- 

 drical and nearly central tube, which is transversely septate. Outside of the tube. 



