l62 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



cessible) displayed numerous fragments of chert which essentially 

 differed from that at Hamilton. (Mr. Neill noticed the chert there 

 apparently in situ also). Now if this can be clearly established it 

 may throw additional light on the position of the Tennessee s[)onge 

 beds. One chert at Hamilton is near the base of the Niagaras. It 

 .is said the sponges in the United States occur near the top of the 

 series. I suspect the latter may prove to be ones corresponding 

 with the Dundas chert. The latter displays sponge fragments 

 also. 



It may be noticed I have not referred to Clinton graptolites. 

 A dictyonema in the green shales, a small species, may be new — 

 two others have already been described by Hall. The Barton 

 shales as yet have only displayed two others, one already figured by 

 Spencer, which Dr. Gurley, F. C. S. A., thinks identical with a re- 

 cently named European genus. 



The past long winter has been unusually unfavorable for collect- 

 ing fossils. A great many men were employed in the corporation 

 quarry, but they were changed so frequently, one had not sufificient 

 time to show them how to recognize specimens seen. The frost 

 also penetrated so deeply that it proved difficult for even a practical 

 eye to discover organic remains under the thick coating of ice which 

 enveloped almost every layer in the chert, or blue building beds 

 where the latter were exposed. In fact it was only by splitting the 

 upper grooved and glaciated one of the former, since the workmen 

 ceased quarrying and the snow disappeared partly from the debris 

 left by the last shots on the surface of the cherts, that I succeeded 

 in obtaining a few new graptolites, unknown to me as occur- 

 ring on this continent in the Niagara Silurians. As we recede from 

 the brow of our local escarpment and approach the overlying Barton 

 shales the graptolites present such a dwarfed appearance that it 

 foreshadows their complete extinction, and specimens new to us 

 may prove merely degenerate descendants of others we have not as 

 yet discovered. 



Since the foregoing was written I obtained on the lake shore at 

 Winona a large slab of Cambro Silurian limestone containing 

 numerous specimens of a graptolite bearing to the naked eye a 

 resemblance to graptolithis pristis or diplograptus Hudsonicus 

 (Nicholson). The cell mouths seemed absent and that I considered 



