290 Reports and Proceedings. 



The determination of the species appears to be of considerable 

 interest, inasmuch as it affords an additional instance of the occur- 

 rence in England of the great southern Ehinoceros. This is also 

 the only example of the discovery of that species, except in river or 

 other deposits, either in this country or on the continent. 



Discussion. — The Chairman remarked that at one time the Oreston Rhinoceros 

 ■was referred to R. tichorhinus, but that Buckland, although mentioning the JRAi- 

 noceros, never gave it a specific name. The Chairman also said that the Oreston 

 fissures were not caves, but mere fissures ■which had been filled in ; an entire 

 skeleton occurred at one spot, and the animal must have fallen in. 



Mr. Boyd Dawkins had been struck by the non-tichorhine character of the 

 Oreston specimens some years since. He confirmed Prof. Busk's determination, 

 and remarked that five British species of Rhinoceros are kno'wn, namely : \. R. 

 Schleiermacheri, from the Red Crag of Suffolk (in the Miocene at Darmstadt) ; 

 2, R. etruscus, from the Forest Bed=ii. Merckii (Von Meyer) ; 3. R. megarhinus 

 (Ghriatol) = leptorhinus (Cuv.) ; but the latter name includes also R. Etruscus and 

 R. hemitoechus ; bo that ■the adoption of De ChriBtol's name gets rid of a difficulty ; 

 4. R. hemitcechus ; and 5. R. tichorhinus =R. antiquitatis {^hxm.). 



Prof, Busk, in reply, stated that Oreston ■was a fissure-cavern, and noticed 

 the successive openings in 1816, 1821, and 1826. He did not agree ■with Mr. 

 Boyd Da^wkins in preferring the name megarhinus to Cuvier's leptorhinus. He did 

 not know of the occurrence of two species of Rhinoceros at Oreston. 



2. " On t-wo Gneissoid series in Nova Scotia and new Brunswick, 

 supposed to be the equivalents of the Huronian (Cambrian) and 

 Laurentian." By H. Youle Hind, Esq., M.A. Communicated by 

 Prof. Eamsay, F.E.S., F.G.S. 



This paper described the relations of two gneissoid series in Nova 

 Scotia and New Brunswick, which have hitherto been regarded as 

 intrusive granites and syenites, and have been thus represented on 

 the published geological maps of those provinces. The author con- 

 sidered that these gneisses were in the main of Laurentian age, the 

 Huronian or Cambrian rocks occurring only in patches over a vast 

 area of Laurentian porphyroid gneiss. 



The old gneiss was stated to be brought to the surface by three 

 great undulations between the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia and 

 the Laurentian axis of America north of the St. Lawrence. These 

 axes were rudely parallel to one another, and in the troughs which 

 lay between them the Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous series 

 occurred in regular sequence, the New Brunswick Coal-field occu- 

 pying the central trough. On the line of section, in the troughs 

 to the north-west and south-east, the Lower Carboniferous was 

 stated to be the highest rock series which has escaped denudation. 



The gold-bearing rocks of Nova Scotia are of Lower Silurian age, 

 iand rest either on Huronian strata, or, where these had been re- 

 moved by denudation, on the old Laurentian gneiss. The gold is 

 found chiefly in beds of auriferous quartz of contemporaneous age 

 with the slates and quartzites composing the mass of the series, 

 which, in Nova Scotia, is 12,000 feet thick; and the auriferous 

 beds are worked, in one district or another, through a vertical space 

 of 6000 feet. Besides auriferous beds of quartz, intercalated beds 

 and true veins are found to yield gold, and are worked. 



A series of sharp and well-defined anticlinals ridge the province 



