as nates), ip Him added Sy 35! 5 
THE 
AMERICAN 
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND ARTS. 
[SECOND SERIES.] 
—On American Devonian; (ina letter to the Editors 
f.S. 0.6 
from J. W. Dawson, Principal of McGill University). 
Gentle 
your January number, I observe that some American geologists 
are Inclined to refer certain rocks, hitherto regarded as Upper 
Devonian, to the Carboniferous period. Will you permit me to 
State some facts, derived from the study of fossil plants, which 
seem to me to militate against this view, at least in so 
Eastern America is concerned. : 
In my investigations of the Devonian flora of Eastern America, 
Carried on for several years past, and the latest results of which 
are published in the number of the Journal of the Geological 
Society of London for November, 1862, I have deseri or 
identified sixty-nine species of land plants from Devonian beds; 
and of these only 10 or 12 are even probably Carboniferous spe- 
Most abundant species are also found in the undoubtedly Devo- 
é sandstones, as well as at Perry in Maine, in both of 
Dian G: 
2 Which localities the flora is quite distinct from that of even the 
west Carboniferous beds, (‘‘Sub-Carboniferous” of some au- 
thors). At St. John, New Brunswick, where, in beds which I 
leve to belong to the Upper Devonian, there is a more abund- 
_ nt flora than at the other places mentioned, a larger number, 
* Including the beds formerly incorrectly referred to the Catskill group. 
1863, 
AM. Jour. o1.—SEcoxp Series, Vou. XXXV, No. 105.—Mar, 
a 40 
