THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. ° T2I 
indicating deposition in shallow water as alleged—this admits of 
no dispute. If we are in accord with the late Professor E. Forbes, 
of Edinburgh, respecting the slow subsidence of the mountain 
limestone rocks in Europe, we need scarcely be surprised at finding 
here, embedded in Silurian limestones, some few vegetable organisms 
passing upwards from the underlying Clintons, and accommodating 
themselves to their altered conditions. These may possibly present 
appearances in some respects differing from the original parent Alga, 
as widely as the detached branches or immaturities of the Cambro- 
Silurian I collected in Anticosti differ from the complete fossilized 
plant obtained from the local Clinton beds, or even quite as much 
as the latter seemingly differs from an allied /fucozd, now in the 
Redpath Museum, Montreal, which Sir William Dawson named and 
recognized as a true sea plant in a paper recently published in 
The Quarterly Journal, Geological Society, England, for November, 
1890. 
_ TI must confess I was unable to comprehend how any reasonable 
doubts could possibly have arisen regarding the nature of some, at 
least, of our local plant remains. The Buthotrephis of the Barton 
Niagara beds, of Sir Wm. Dawson, is undoubtedly less complete as 
regards form than the one contained in the Clinton flagstones- 
There we have the root, (conical), main stem, and _ lesser 
branches impressed entire to the topmost one on the layer. I am 
unable to recall any land plant of the coal measures in a better state 
of preservation. ‘The confounded thing, however, does not present 
the blackened appearance it should have presented if it only adhered 
to ‘the natural law,” which, unfortunately it seems to have utterly 
rejected. There it displays itself on our museum cases in all its 
naked simplicity, challenging investigation, and ready to convince 
the most skeptical regarding its nature. When C. D. Walcott was 
here some years ago, I split one of the large flags for him, and it 
revealed the smaller branches alternately proceeding from the main 
stem. 1am not quite so sure that the conical root put in an appear- 
ance in the interior of this particular layer on that occasion, but | 
have preserved a single radix from several given away, and as this 
portion of the Fucoid or Alga is rarely preserved in the Clinton 
rocks here, I must request that the Geological Section of the Assoc- 
iation will perceive it cannot be well dis-associated from the branches 
of the Fucoid or Alga, named Buthotrephis (Hall), in our cases. 
