REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR IQTI 121 



front beginning a section which extends continuously along the 

 shore for more than two miles. This section practically ends at 

 the east in a volcanic cliff known as Black Cape and as the same 

 name has been applied to the post-town on the cliff, the section 

 may be designated the Black Cape section. 



When the late Doctor Ells and his aides mapped this part of the 

 Gaspe peninsula the rocks on this stretch of shore were registered 

 as part Siluric and part Devonic. Their variations in dip were 

 recorded, but little clue was given to the stratigraphic and 

 paleontologic importance of the peculiar development of the series. 



It is well to record here, in passing, some recent determinations 

 in the distribution of the paleozoic rocks in the New Richmond 

 region in order to indicate the general condition in which the Siluric 

 belt is involved. The plain between the rivers referred to is an 

 elevated submarine or barachois bottom and is notable for its fine 

 exposure of raised beaches on the sea front at New Richmond 

 village, carrying shell banks which stand at a height of 20 feet and 

 dip eastward about 3' in a 100'. The shells, mostly lying vertical 

 in the clay as they were lifted out of the sea, are : M y a a r e - 

 naria, M. truncata, Macoma sabulosa, M. bal- 

 thica, Saxicava rugosa, Seripes groenlandi- 

 c u s ; and the gastropod Chrysodomus despectus.^ 



For a distance of five miles back from the sea front of this plain 

 there are few, if any, rock exposures, but the Carleton mountains 

 lie behind and about it in the form of an amphitheater, the nearer 

 ridges of which are essentially composed of ledges of the red sand- 

 stone and conglomerates of the Bonaventure formation.^ At the 

 west, on the farther bank of the Grand Cascapedia gray unfossili- 



1 Identified by Dr H. A. Pilsbry. 



2 Doctor Ells, in his maps of Gaspe and accompanying reports thereon, 

 endeavored to subdivide the general mass of red sandstones and conglom- 

 erates which had been broadly grouped together by Logan under the name 

 " Bonaventure formation," into a lower (Devonic) and upper (Carbonic) ele- 

 ment. I believe entirely in Doctor Ells's close approximation to the facts in 

 this expression of the value of the Bonaventure formation, but admit my con- 

 viction that an actual boundary between these elements can be located only 

 with great uncertainty. It has been my practice to refer to the formation 

 as a whole as of Devono-Carbonic equivalence and there is not, to my 

 observation, any unconformity or change of sedimentation sufficient to 

 justify a conception of discontinuity of sedimentation. Doubtless sections 

 which I have not seen came under Ells's observation and I disavow any 

 intention to discredit the determination of so admirable an observer as he. 

 The truth is sufficiently stated in the admission of Devono-Carbonic age of 



