516 GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY. 



full of capelia in the post-pliocene clay of the Ottawa, and the similar beds filled 

 •with fossil fishes in other deposits as far back as the old red sandstone. Geoloo-istg 

 have often sought to account for such phenomena, by supposing sudden changes of 

 levelj or irruptions of poisonous matter into the waters; but such catastrophes are 

 evidently by no means necessary to produce the effect. Here in the quiet watera 

 of Gaspe Bay, year by year immense quantities of the remains of the Sand Launce 

 may be imbedded in the cand and mud without even a storm to destroy them. 

 Similar accidents, I was told, happen to the shoals of capelin, so that there is 

 nothing to prevent the acccumulation here of beds, equally rich in the remains of 

 fishes with those other deposits of ichthyolites that have excited so much interest 

 and wonder." 



ALLEGED DISCOVERT OF A FOSSIL CONUS IN THE DUIFT OF WESTERN CANADA. 



One of our students, Mr. James Mitchell, of the Village of Tork on the Grand 

 River, lias placed in our hands a small and water-worn specimen of a cone, said to 

 have been obtained from a gravel pit in that locality. Fearing some mistake, we 

 paid a* visit to the spot; and although we failed to procure another specimen, we 

 obtained indirect evidence of the occurrence of this or a similar shell in the gravel 

 pit in question. On asking a laborer engaged there, if he ever met with shells of 

 any kind in the gravel, he replied; "Yes, sometimes; little kind o' shells like 

 big at one end and pointed at the other 1" — a homely, but perfectly intelligible 

 description of a low-spiied cone. The gravel deposit forms the capping of a high 

 hill or portion of a ridge overlooking the valley of the Grand River. It containa 

 rolled boulders of gneiss, limestone, &c., and is evidently a true drift accumulation, 

 although (like many of our drift deposits) it is more or less coarsely stratified. 

 The underlying rock of the country, is a greyish limestone, apparently poor in fos- 

 sils, belonging to the Gypsiferous or Onondaga group. Large irregular masses of 

 gypsum occur in it, in the immediate neighbourhood. The broad " flats " along the 

 borders of the Grand River, belong to a period more recent than that of the true 

 drift. They contain an immense number of specimens of helix (two species) 6?t- 

 limus (two species), melania, limnea, planorbii, cyclas, and perhaps other terres- 

 trial and fresh-water genera. The occurrence of a species of conus in the drift, can 

 scarcely be accounted for except on the supposition that a patch of Eocene or other 

 Tertiary deposits existed during the Drift period, at no grt-at distance fi'om the spot 

 in question. From these deposits (now entirely -washed away) the fossil cones, 

 with perhaps a portion of the accompanying drift materials, may then have been 

 derived — the solid structure of the cone shells preventing their destruction. The 

 crystalline boulders in this gravel are for the most part of small size, whilst all the 

 larger stones belong to the rocks of the surrounding country. Amongst other, we 

 collected a piece of brown ferruginous sandstone, with modiolopsis and tellinomya 

 impressions, belonging to the Clinton group, of which there is an outcrop about 

 fifteen miles to the north of the locality under consideration. But whatever may 

 be the true explanation of this apparently paradoxical case, we have thought it 

 advisab'e to call attention in tbe present notice to the alleged occurrence of these 

 shells in our western drifc, in the hope that further explorations, to substantiate the 

 fact, may be set on foot by persons residing in the neighborhood. The accompany- 



