304 H. M. AMI KNOYDART FORMATION OF NOVA SCOTIA 



the New Brunswick equivalents in his '' Report of geological surve3's 

 and explorations in the counties of Guysborough, Antigonish, Pictou, 

 Colchester, and HalifVix from 1882 to 1886." 



In this Annual Report, 1886, new series, volume ii, under the head of 

 " F. Devonian," on page 49 P, Mr Fletcher describes three distinct groups 

 of Devonian strata corresponding closel}^ with those of New Brunswick, 

 and gives the following table of equivalencies : 



New Brunswick Nova Scotia 



3. Mispeck group. 3. Upper Red slate and sandstone 



group. 

 2. Dadoxylon sandstone and Cordaite 2. Middlegray sandstone and slate 



shale. group, 



i. Bloomnbury conglomerate. 1. Lower Conglomerate group. 



After giving the distribution of the above in Nova Scotia in general, 

 the first reference to the age of the McArras Brook strata is then made 

 on page 49 P, which reads as follows: "The upper rocks" (?".e.,the 

 Upper Red slate and sandstone group) " are found again near Union 

 Railway station, and also at McArras brook." 



On page 67 P Mr Fletcher quotes Dr Honeyman's * views on the age of 

 these rocks : " They are certainly not Lower Helderberg, and may there- 

 fore be Devonian ; " and on i)age 68 P the same writer quotes Sir William 

 Dawson,t in which he regards them as " pre-Carboniferous, although not 

 separated from the Silurian." 



Mr Fletcher describes the strata on McArras brook as follows: 



"Good exposures are also cut by McArras brook behind the mass of amygdaloid 

 at the shore, consisting of red, flinty, micaceous, jointed sandstone and slate, often 

 concretionary, interstratified with greenish thick bedded and flaggy sandstone, 

 containing traces of carbonate of copper and iron pyrites, the brook being rocky 

 up to the shore road. 



"From the latter a collection of, fossils was made by Mr Weston, comprising 

 fragments of plants and fish teeth, not certainly determinable, together with cer- 

 tain interesting footprints, ProtichniteK carbonari uh.^^ % 



Discovery of Fossils and their Lnterpretation 



Up to 1886 but little had been done with a view to determining the 

 exfict geological horizon to which this Devonian area belonged, the area 

 in question having been generally dismissed with the statement that 

 they were certainly non-Silurian. In that year Mr T. C. Weston and 



* Trans. Nova Scotian Inst. Sci., vol. 3, pp. 13, 188. 

 t Acadian Geologj', p. 516, line 4, and Supplement to the same, p. 49. 



t These tracks have since been described by the writer under the name Ichthyoidichnites acadi- 

 eyisis in a paper read before the Nova Scotian Institute of Science in May, 19')1. 



