Charles Frederick Hartt. 115 



mained for Mr. Hartt and his collaborateurs to amass the 

 materials which, in the hands of the sagacious Principal of 

 McGill University, were to show that these plant-bearing 

 sandstones contained a Devonian flora. 



The writer had already found in these beds a sufficient 

 number and variety of species to enable Sir AVm. Dawson 

 to pronounce upon their Devonian age, but the rich harvest 

 of fossils — exquisitely preserved ferns, asterophyllites, and 

 psilophyta were not discovered until Mr. Hartt entered 

 the field. To the collection and observation of these 

 plants he gave the whole of his vacations during the years 

 1861, '62 and '63; and the result of this work has been of 

 the most enduring value to science. Every bed of Ihe 

 unique section at the " Fern ledges" in Lancaster, West of 

 St. John, was carefully studied, its fossils collected and its 

 remains recorded. Such a work had not been done before 

 in the Maritime provinces of Canada. The thoroughness 

 of the work will be seen from the fact that while Hartt dis- 

 covered scores of species in these beds, no new species of 

 plants have been added to those which crowned his re- 

 searches, and remains of only two insects beside those he 

 found. 



The discovery of insects of such great antiquity was per- 

 haps the most striking result of these investigations. A 

 few insects mostly related to the cockroaches had previous- 

 ly been found in the Coal Measures in several countries, 

 but Hartt's discovery of insect wings in these older rocks 

 threw a new light upon the history of insect life in the first 

 geological ages. These insects were of five species, and 

 were placed in the hands of Dr. S. H. Scudder of Boston for 

 study. He referred them all to the Neuroptera ; in part to 

 new, in part, doubtfully, to old families, and suggested that 

 some of the forms were synthetic types. But their impor- 

 tant bearing on the history of insect-life was not then 

 fully reached by that sagacious and experienced student of 

 insects, for he has since referred them all to a great Palaeo- 

 zoic order, now quite extinct, the Palreodictyoptera of Gol- 

 denberg, from which he conceives that all the modern or- 

 ders of insects have arisen. 



