PARALLELISM OF THE QUEBEC GROUP. 21 



Jahrbuch, pronounced the greater number of the fossils, described 

 and figured by us from the Quebec group, to be Lower Silurian, 

 while in his opinion the others present a primordial aspect. 



Prof. F. McCor, Director of the National Museum of Victo- 

 ria, in Australia, in a paper published in the Annals of Natural 

 History in February, 1862, announced the discovery of the com- 

 pound graptolites of the Quebec group " in the slates of North Mel- 

 bourne containing the auriferous quartz-veins of the gold-fields.' 1 * 

 He identified the Australian slates with the Llandeilo rocks of 

 Wales, Scotland and Ireland on the one hand, and with the Que- 

 bec group on the other. The compound graptolites were first dis- 

 covered and brought into notice by the Canadian Survey ; and it 

 is to us a source of great satisfaction, that they have now become, 

 in the hands of skilful palaeontologists the means, by which rocks, 

 separated from each other by a distance nearly equal to half the 

 circumference of the globe, can be proved to be of the same geo- 

 logical age. The gold fields of the Chaudiere, near Quebec, ap- 

 pear thus to lie in the same horizon with those of Australia. It 

 would also seem, that the compound, differ from the simple grap- 

 tolites, in being more persistently confined to a particular period 

 near the base of the Lower Silurian. 



Prof. R. Harkness and J. W. Salter, on the lVth of De- 

 cember last, read a paper before the Geological Society, which 

 bears so importantly upon our discoveries in the Quebec group 

 that I shall quote the abstract of it entire as published in the 

 Geologist of January, ] 863. It is as follows : — 



December nth.—" On the Skiddaw Slate Series." By Prof. R. Hark- 

 ness ; with a note on the Graptolites, by Mr. J. W. Salter. Some gen- 

 eral sections through the Skiddaw Slates were described in detail, and 

 the localities in which fossils had been previously found by Professor 

 Sedgwick were especially noticed. The author stated that he had dis- 

 covered several species of Graptolites, new to the Skiddaw Slates, in cer- 

 tain flaggy beds almost devoid of cleavage, which occur at intervals it. 

 the lower portion of the series, in several localities. Professor Harkness 

 showed that these rocks were much more fossiliferous than had hitherto 

 been supposed ; and that the evidence of the fossils, as interpreted by 

 Mr. Salter, clearly proved them to be of the same age as the Lower 

 Llandeilo rocks of Wales, and the Quebec group of Canada. The thick- 

 ness of the Skiddaw Slates was estimated at 7000 feet, and the total 

 thickness from the base of the Skiddaw Slates to the Coniston limestone 



* It does not seem to be clearly proved that the gold actually belongs 

 to the graptolitic slates. 



