340 Canadian Record of Science. 



Dictyonema flabelliforme had been sought for in the black 

 shales of Division 3 (Bretonian) unsuccessfully until this 

 year. Films, probably due to this fossil had been met with, 

 but they were too much distorted and obscured by slaty 

 cleavage to be with safety referred to it. Xow, however, 

 the presence of this fossil is undoubted, and serves to add 

 another to the known paloeontological horizons of the St. 

 John group. 



Mr. G. Stead, whom the writer had sent to search for the 

 Tremadoc fauna on ~N&vj Island, in St. John harbour, found 

 Dictyonema in the ledges at the west end of the island. 

 Subsequent examinations resulted in the discovery of fine 

 examples of the fossil, and showed that it occurs at intervals 

 through a considerable thickness of beds. Judging from the 

 position at which Dictyonema was found, it is probable that 

 the Tremadoc fauna is not on the island, but to the north of 

 it in the channel of the river St. John. 



The history of this Dictyonema is interesting, as showing 

 through how many successive phases of increasing accuracy 

 the knowledge of an extinct organism may pass. The 

 original describer of the species evidently thought it 

 related to the sea-fans as he called it a Gorgonia. The 

 rising, branching and spreading hydrosome, with its sub- 

 parallel, occasionally forking branches, would seem to 

 favour this reference of the species. The branches too, are 

 covered with minute pores, or what appear to be such, and 

 thus in another respect the species resembles the sea-fans. 



But Eichwald could not have discovered that he was 

 dealing with a hollow cup or bell, and not a fan-like ex- 

 panded organism, or he would scarcely have applied the 

 specific name by which he designated the fossil. 



Still further from a correct understanding of the nature 

 of this fossil, were Goeppert and Unger, who thought it to 

 be a plant of some kind. These men were palceobotanists, 

 and so less prepared to look for analogies to the fossil in the 

 animal kingdom. 



It is now generally admitted that the fossil described by 

 the late J. W. Salter as Dictyonema sociale is identical with 



