IgO NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



more fully evaluated by the skilful New York State Geologist. The results 

 of his extended investigation of the invertebrate paleontology of the Gaspe 

 Devonic remain as yet unpublished, but an idea of their general import 

 may be gathered from the following extract from a private communication, 

 which we are enabled to present here through the courtesy of Dr Clarke : 



The profusion of evidence that has been obtained from a study of 

 invertebrate paleontology seems indubitably to indicate that the Gaspe 

 sandstones are not of the geological age assigned to them by Logan and 

 the Canadian geologists generally. That is to say, they are not Oriskanian, 

 for, though they contain certain Oriskany species, these are the survivors 

 of the earlier limestone faunas of that region persisting during the incursion 

 of a distinctively Hamilton Lamellibranch and Brachiopod fauna from the 

 southwest. 



Dawson subdivided the Gaspe sandstone into three parts : the lower 

 division coordinated with the Oriskany and Onondaga; the middle, equiva- 

 lent to the Hamilton group ; and an upper conceived to be equivalent to 

 the Chemung. This entirely arbitrary subdivision was based upon the dis- 

 tribution of the terrestrial flora, and is not, I think, in any way borne out 

 by the present evidence. The weakness of the comparison lies in the 

 attempt to correlate with true marine deposits the very heavy mantle of 

 sands of telluric, delta or lagoon origin conformable in every way physio- 

 graphically to the Old Red deposits elsewhere, the few marine fossils which 

 it contains being the accumulation of overwash from outside during times 

 of stress. Ells and Low have suggested the probability that the fish-bearing 

 beds at Scaumenac and Campbellton were laid down in an area separated 

 from the more northerly region by barriers of old land, and in my judgment 

 this is an entirely probable condition, not eliminating the possibility of con- 

 nection between the two basins at some point further westward. 



Indeed, as early as 1883, it was noted by R. W. Ells that a number of 

 invertebrate fossils from the northern limit of the Gaspe Devonic were 

 "strongly typical of the Hamilton formation,"' thus leading to the inference 

 that " the Gaspe sandstone series, of the coast, is probably of the same age, 

 though the absence of typical shells in a large portion of it makes their 

 separation more difficult." The same author had previously described the 

 beds at Campbellton, N. B., before they were found to contain fish 

 remains, and had pronounced upon their equivalence with the lower 



■Geol. Siir. Can. Rep't of Progress 1883. (1884) p. 23E. 



