SEPTEMBER 29, 1899.] 
Schoharie grit, Onondaga limestone, Cor- 
niferous limestone, Hamilton, Portage and 
Chemung groups.’’ This paper was origi- 
nally published in four parts, and in the 
third and fourth parts, fourteen of the spe- 
cies of brachiopoda therein enumerated or 
described are said to occur in the Oriskany. 
The ‘Geology of Canada,’ published in 
1863, contains a list of thirty species of 
fossils from the Ontario Oriskany, most of 
which, in the Museum of the Geological 
Survey at Ottawa, are labelled as having 
been collected by J. De Cew. In that pub- 
lication it is stated that only the lowest of 
the three divisions of this formation extends 
into Ontario ; that it occupies only a few 
small areas in the townships of Dunn, 
Oneida and Cayuga, as a ‘ very narrow bor- 
der’ to the Corniferous, and that it ‘seldom 
exceeds about six feet in thickness.’ A ‘list 
of the fossils occurring in the Oriskany sand- 
stone of Maryland, New York and Ontario,’ 
by Mr. Charles Schuchert, published in 
1889, in the ‘ Highth Annual Report of the 
Geologist of the State of New York,’ con- 
tains the names of seventy-six species from 
Cayuga. Most of the Ontario material 
from which this list was made was probably 
obtained from Mr. De Cew. But Mr. 
Schuchert, who made additional collections 
of the fossils of the Ontario Oriskany for the 
United States National Museum in 1895, 
says, in a recent letter to the writer, 
that he then saw how easy it is to mix Oris- 
kany and Corniferous fossils while collect- 
ing, and believes that the collections made 
by Mr. De Cew are mixed. Mr. Schuchert 
thinks that near Cayuga there is a transi- 
tion zone between the Oriskany and the true 
Corniferous, and that many of the fossils 
recorded in the ‘Geology of Canada’ as 
from the Oriskany may be from this zone. 
Further, he is of the opinion that it is only 
the uppermost portion of the Oriskany that 
is represented near Cayuga. 
The fossils of the Corniferous formation 
SCIENCE. 
431 
or Upper Helderberg group of Ontario have 
been determined or described, either sepa- 
rately or together with those of the Hamil- 
ton formation, by E. Billings and Professor 
H. A. Nicholson, in Canadian publications 
ranging from 1857 to 1895. Incidentally 
they have been described or enumerated by 
James Hall in the thirty-fifth regents’ re- 
port of the New York State Cabinet of 
Natural History, and in volumes four to 
eight of the Paleontology of that State, also 
by Dr. Carl Rominger in his ‘ Fossil 
Corals’ of Michigan. 
Tabulating the information obtainable 
from these and other sources, and omitting 
names that have long been known to be 
synonyms, the number of species of fossils 
that have been recorded from this formation 
in Ontario would seem to be 258, as fol- 
lows : 
Corals (inclusive of Stromatoporoids)........ 100 
\WORMES odododadpdousd0ddoohdapedboAdMKudD 1 
Polyzoa (= Bry0zoa).........2eeceeesweees 40 
IBTACHTOPOMArfaretapsyavetersterenvevevers|akeisreraicteretencaetevers 60 
Pelecypoda (—Lamellibranchiata)*"**...... 10 
Gasteropoda.... 22... cece eee c cece cece ceee 17 
Cephalopoda... 2... 2... sec eee ccc ee eee 8 
Ostracod ayrelereiteteleleleteterelerievers eleleteleietsietehsteietete 1 
PIrilODibayerieieielercuuectolatelveteleleisrercisteloel telat 17 
INEMWEboooooaGuoE DoODDObDDOSDODDODBOOONGO 4 
258 
In addition to these, there are in the 
Museum of the Canadian Survey, a few frag- 
mentary crinoids, several species of polyzoa, 
a few brachiopoda, pelecypoda and gastero- 
poda, and one pteropod (an undetermined 
species of Tentaculites) from the Corniferous 
of Ontario, that have yet to be studied. 
From this list it would appear that corals 
form by far the most conspicuous feature in 
the fauna of the Ontario Corniferous. But, 
although in places this formation is mainly 
a large coral reef, it is obvious that quite a 
number of the species that have been pro- 
posed therefrom are based upon very in- 
sufficient characters. For some time past 
the writer’s friend and colleague, Mr. L. M. 
