BEEKMANTOWN AND CHAZY FORMATIONS OF CHAMPLAIN BASIN 525 



As to the connection of the Champlain basin and Newfoundland 

 embayment, in Beekmantown time, we have curiously enough two 

 entirely different and apparently militating groups of facts. On 

 one hand the Fort Cassin fauna of the Champlain basin of New 

 York and Vermont has no species in common with the Newfound- 

 land Beekmantown fauna, though a considerable number of genera 

 are restricted to the two faunas. On the other hand, Billings has 

 made the following positive statements [1865, p. 376] : 



No one could compare the collections from Cow Head (New- 

 foundland) with those of Point Levis and Philipsburg (Lake Cham- 

 plain) without some feeling of astonishment, that in localities nearly 

 a thousand miles distant from each other, there should be such a 

 perfect identity, not only in the fossils, but also in the character of 

 the rock. 



Out of the 34 species collected at Cow Head, 23 are perfectly 

 identical with those collected at Point Levis, Bedford, Philipsburg 

 and other tyoical localities of the formation. 



Billings's conclusion and ours can be easily reconciled by the fol- 

 lowing consideration. The Beekmantown faunas, which Billings 

 here has in mind and which alone were known to him, viz, those of 

 Philipsburg and Point Levis, are entirely different from the Fort 

 Cassin fauna and represent other subdivisions of the Beekmantown 

 age than the Fort Cassin fauna. All evidence goes to show that the 

 Philipsburg beds like the typical beds at Beekmantown are older 

 than the Fort Cassin beds. In the age. or ages represented by the 

 former beds, there existed undoubtedly an open marine channel from 

 the Champlain basin to the Newfoundland embayment.^ 



The Fort Cassin fauna is not yet known from the St Lawrence 

 channel and Newfoundland. Since the Newfoundland Beekman- 

 town limestone is well developed and its faunas have been fully de- 

 scribed by Billings and later on searched for cephalopods by Hyatt, 

 the fact that no Fort Cassin forms have as yet been recorded from 

 there, does in some measure indicate their absence in the Newfound- 

 land basin, and thereby an interruption of the connection between the 

 Newfoundland embayments and the Champlain basins, for the Fort 

 Cassin stage at least. We may mention here that, in another place 

 [1904, p. 503] we have concluded from the distribution of the 

 graptolite Goniograptus thureaui — which is found in 

 Australia, New York and Quebec, but has not entered the Atlantic 

 and Baltic basins — that the Champlain basin (as part of the Appa- 



^ It is in this connection quite significant that one of the few cephalopods 

 found at Beekmantown itself, viz, Protocycloceras lamarcki 

 Billings, is also known from the Mingan islands and Newfoundland. 



