78 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



" nel (viz., between the Mingan Islands and Anticosti)." Now, is 

 it not natural to suppose we must have had indications of these shales 

 in the cliffs of the island also, if the Bird's Eye, Black River, etc., 

 actually existed there ? The Utica shale occurring at Collingwood, 

 etc., if you examine some of the specimens in the Museum cases, 

 will be found to contain large numbers of Trilobite fragments 

 (Asaphus Canadensis) (Chapman), and occasionally a few Brachi- 

 pods, but the former are altogether absent from the shales you find 

 among the shingles on the Anticosti shore. It certainly closely 

 resembles the Utica rock, but one may well hesitate to confidently 

 recognize it as such. 



The Hudson River, or " Bala beds," are said to be some twelve 

 feet in thickness in the Quebec Province. That Anticosti was once 

 j oined to the main land can scarcely be doubted. The Flora and 

 Fauna, with a few exceptions, are similar. No snakes have ever 

 been seen there, however, and, stranger still, notwithstanding the 

 many wrecks along the coast, rats are never seen there alive. The 

 French fishermen believe the climate proves fatal to them. Hawks, 

 eagles, foxes and martins may, perhaps, have more to do with it. It 

 can scarcely be imagined that the air of one of the healthiest islands 

 on the globe, where sickness is almost unknown, is responsible for 

 their absence. 



Fever in " Con Cregan " lands the hero of the work on the 

 island, and gives an amusing account of the means taken to rid him- 

 self of his unwelcome predecessors, the rodents, which shared with 

 him the shelter afforded by his cheerless domicile. Putting aside 

 this circumstance as an exaggeration, merely intended to heighten 

 the effect for his readers, the novelist's description of the surround- 

 ings, both in Anticosti and Quebec, bear the impress of personal 

 observation, and could scarcely have been otherwise acquired. 



