22 Canadian Record of Science. 
Norway, Wales, Newfoundland and the eastern provinces 
of Canada (Acadia) are countries where the existence of a 
paleozoic formation older than that holding Paradoxides 
can now be fairly established. It seems better to regard 
these rocks as a lower series of the Cambrian system, for in 
Wales, the corresponding slates and sandstones have long 
been called Cambrian, whether we take the authority of 
Sedgwick, Murchison, Hicks or others; and although no 
physical break has been established in Europe, between the 
Paradoxides beds and these older Cambrian rocks, this is not 
the case in America; but, on the contrary, the red rocks at 
the base of the St. John group (as well as those beneath 
the Paradoxides beds of Newfoundland) are of a different 
series from the measures properly referable to this group. 
The importance of these subjacent rocks was not fairly 
understood until explorations, made during the past summer, 
revealed their great thickness and some evidence of the 
fauna they contain. In the report on the geology of South- 
ern New Brunswick, 1865, p. 24, this mass of sediments 
was spoken of as the upper member of the Coldbrook group, 
and thus distinct from the St. John group; later (Rep. 
Prog. Geol. Sur. Can., 1870-1, p. 59), it was joined to the 
latter formation, because the want of conformity existing 
between the two could not then be established; but it is 
now found that this red series is unconformable, not only to 
the St. John group, but also (as had been previously dis- 
covered) to the underlying Coldbrook group. 
Near the city of St. John, only a few scores of feet in | 
thickness of this formation is to be seen, and even this dis- 
appears in the town of Portland, where the St. John group 
rests directly upon the “upper series” of the Laurentian 
area, But in tracing these red rocks eastward, around the 
margin of the St. John Basin of Cambrian rocks, they are 
found to exhibit a much greater thickness, and at its eastern 
end there are no less than 1,200 feet in thickness of these 
underlying measures. 
In the valley of the Kennebecasis, these underlying red 
rocks are wanting, and there the St. John group rests, in 
some places, on the “upper series,” and at others on the old 
