EARLY DEVONIC HISTORY OF NEW YORK AND EASTERN NORTH AMERICA 8/ 



p e c u 1 i a r i s, P h a c o p s correlator. It is safer to consider these as 

 indicative of and survivors from the Grande Greve fauna than to construe 

 them as Oriskany elements. There is no problem here of unequal diffu- 

 sion of the fauna through successive strata. Whatever their relative age 

 elsewhere, all are found here commingled. 



The Hamilton species indicate the introduction and prevalence of a 

 fauna and a geologic stage much later than Oriskany, but the sea into 

 which this fauna had encroached held surivors of the Grande Greve fauna. 

 Of very great significance to the paleogeography of the country is the pres- 

 ence of this Hamilton fauna for it indicates a northeast passage at this late 

 date from the Appalachian gulf through which the fauna departed eastward 

 along the continental border. The problem presented here does not con- 

 cern the inward migration of the fauna from the east as in the case of 

 earlier faunas for incontrovertible evidence indicates that the fauna of 

 Middle Devonic time arrived in the Appalachian gulf from the south along 

 the Andes littoral. We may regard the path of advance indicated by the 

 Gaspe sandstone fauna blazed by the outcrops on the north shore of the 

 Bay of Chaleurs at Scaumenac and Maria from the first of which we have 

 the fine Old Red fishes described by Whiteaves and from the latter indica- 

 tions of the marine fauna as noted by Ells and Low.' There should be in 



'These writers have suggested the probability that the Devonic deposits referred to 

 on the Bay of Chaleurs at Maria, Scaumenac and Campbellton were laid down in an area 

 separated from the more northerly region here under consideration, by barriers of old land 

 composed of upturned Siluric and Cambric strata. This seems to us an entirely probable 

 condition but not without possibility of connection between the two basins at some point 

 further westward. A fuller knowledge of the marine invertebrates reported from Maria 

 will help to throw light on this point. Because of certain identifications of fossils from 

 Port Daniel made by Billings, some doubt had rested in the writer's mind as to the possi- 

 bility of the limestones and sandstones there which have been recorded as of Siluric age, 

 being of later date. Port Daniel presents a rather unusual thickness of limestones greatly 

 distorted and altered by contact with eruptives and these are highly fossiliferous though 

 the preservation of the fossils is bad. At the head of Port Daniel bay extensive exposures 

 have been recently afforded by bush fires and the gray limestones show themselves to be 

 largely reefs of Stromatopora, Cladopora, Phillipsastraea, Favosites, Astrocerium, Halysites 



