PALEONTOLOGIC NOTES AND FAUNAL RELATIONS 311 



Sandstone " of Herefordshire, which enables geologists to correlate the 

 strata with a marked degree of proximity to certainty : 



" The Old Red Sandstone " of Herefordshire was long thought to be non-fossil- 

 iferous, a few fragmentary specimens only having been found when in the railway 

 cuttings near Ledbury, the Rev. W. S. Symmonds (see Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, 

 vol. 16, p. 193, and vol. 17, p. 152) discovered in the lowest beds (the Ledbury 

 shales) of that formation remains of Pterygotus, Onchus Pteraspis, and Cepha- 

 lapsis, together with large numbers of the head shields of Auchenaspis." 



It is impossible to read over the association of forms in the strata near 

 Ledbury, in Herefordshire, without recognizing in them a fauna and 

 horizon similar to that met with at Mc Arras brook, in Antigonish 

 county. Nova Scotia. 



In 1843 Doctor Abraham Gesner described * an " Old Red Sandstone " 

 or Devonian group, which he recognized above Silurian beds . . . 

 in several parts of the province, . . . consisting of . . . "a 

 bright red micaceous sandstone or conglomerate, accompanied by thin 

 beds of red shale and marly clay, and in some places containing seams 

 of fibrous gypsum." He adds : " Hitherto no organic remains have 

 been found in it." He recognizes it at Advocate harbor and on the 

 Moose river, where it is " seen lying unconformably beneath the Coal 

 Measures." 



Mr Fletcher classes the rocks of Advocate harbor as Devonian, so that 

 the " Old Red Sandstone or Devonian group " of Gesner must therefore 

 be classed with the rocks of Union and Riversdale, which, from the fauna 

 and flora found inthem, are referable to the Carboniferous system, and 

 from their position in the stratigraphic succession may be referable to the 

 Meso-Carboniferous. The gypsum-bearing strata of Gesner are likewise 

 also Carboniferous and not Devonian. 



In November, 1899, in a communication on a number of fossil fishes 

 sent him by the writer from various localities in Nova Scotia, in which 

 the geological horizon and precise affinities of the species sent were 

 doubtful, Mr Smith-Woodward, the eminent authority on Paleozoic 

 fishes, gives the following notes on the specimens from McArras brook, 

 adding that they had been submitted by him to Doctor R. Traquair, of 

 Edinburgh : 



''The specimens from McArras brook are extremely interesting, and represent 

 the base of the Lower Old Red Sandstone of Britain. The pteraspidian remains 

 are sufficient to prove'that they belong to the genus Pteraspis. Both dorsal and 

 ventral shields are so much like those of P. crouchii that if these Nova Scotian fos- 

 sils had been found in western England we should have referred them to the latter 

 species. Perhaps the rostral plate may prove to distinguish your form when it 



* Proc. Geol. Soc. London, 1843, vol. 4, part 1, no. 65, p. 187. 



