430 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [May 10, 



plant-remains combined the features of the Hamilton and Portage 

 groups of New York. In this case the Middle as well as Upper 

 Devonian should be represented at St. John, seeing that there are 

 5000 feet of Devonian sediment beneath the plant-beds. 



Besides the area along the north shore of the Bay of Fundy, over 

 which this series extends, another is reported by Professor Hitchcock 

 in northern Maine, but the series has not yet been met with in the 

 neighbouring province. 



The metalliferous strata of this age in New Brunswick are largely 

 charged with ores of copper, which occur not only in veins, but in 

 fahlbands. One of these (at Black Eiver) holds also the remains of 

 Devonian vegetation, which, as Dr. T. Sterry-Hunt suggests re- 

 specting the origin of similar deposits in the Quebec group, may have 

 given rise to the metalliferous layers bj causing the decomposition of 

 metallic salts held in solution. 



If the lower members of this series at St. John are equivalent to 

 the Middle Devonian, the phenomena attendant upon their deposition 

 are in strong contrast with those which prevailed in the middle 

 States and North-east Canada during the same period. As we rise 

 in the series, however, a greater resemblance is established, and at the 

 summit sediments are found closely resembling the deposits to the 

 west and north. 



Prior to its formation great changes had occurred in the condition 

 and relative positions of the older series. For the Devonian rocks 

 are found to repose successively upon Lower Silurian, Huronian, 

 Laurentian, and Upper Silurian formations, westward of St. John, 

 showing that these had been uplifted and folded, and had to a 

 certain extent assumed the geographical parallelism which they now 

 present, previously to the existence of the first-named series. 



Nevertheless, wherever these younger deposits are voluminous or 

 widely spread, they are involved in the grand folds impressed upon 

 all the formations which are of earlier date than the Lower Carboni- 

 ferous. The Devonian and the older formations are distinguished 

 from those which succeed by a semi-metamorphism which has ex- 

 pelled from all deposits preceding those of the Carboniferous age 

 that bituminous matter with which many of them were once charged. 

 I am therefore disposed to think that these Middle and Upper 

 Devonian deposits witnessed many of those changes which accom- 

 panied the grand period of upheavals in North-east America, and 

 that the close of the age is in Acadia a limit as strongly marked, 

 so far as physical features are concerned, as that which divides the 

 Azoic from Palaeozoic formations, or the New Eed Sandstone from 

 the Post -tertiary. 



VII. Lower Carboniferous. 



In southern New Brunswick this formation covers a large extent 

 of surface in King's, Albert, and Westmoreland counties (100 miles 

 in length, and of very varied width). From this quarter it extends 

 in a narrow margin around the southern and north-western sides 

 of the great coal-field, being at one point within twenty miles of 



