GEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY SURVEY OF CANADA. 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO CANADIAN PALEONTOLOGY. 



VOLUME I. 



BY .1. F. WHITBAVES. 



2. On some fossils from the Hamilton Formation of Ontario, with a list 

 of the species at present Jcnoicn from that formation and province. 



The caleareoui; shales and limestones of the Hamilton Formation of 

 the Middle Devonian System in western Ontario have long pos8e'~sed 

 a special interest to palaBontologists, on account of the variety and 

 excellent state of jjieservalion of the fossils which they contain. 



A succinct account of the first recognition of the exact geological 

 horizon of this group of rocks is given by Mr. Alex:ander Murray on 

 pages 129-182 of the "ilejjort of Progress of the Geological Survey of 

 Canada for 185.3-54-55-56," published in 1857, and their distribution in 

 Ontario is described more in detail in the fifteenth chapter of the 

 " Geology of Canada" (1863) and in Professor Chapman's " Outlines of 

 the Geology of Canada" published in 1876. 



According to the writer last mentioned, " the formation in this dis- 

 ti'ict is estimated at about 250 feet in thickness. It extends across the 

 counties of Xorfolk, Elgin, Kent, Middlesex and Lambton, and also the 

 south part of Huron, but is much obscured throughout this area by 

 overlying cla\-s, sands and other drift and superficial deposits. The 

 best exposures occur in the township of Bosanquet, in the north-west 

 corner of Lambton." To this it may be added that extensive and 

 richly fossilili'rous outci-ojis occur on both banks of the Sable Eiver, 

 in the adjacent township of West Williams, county of Middlesex, near 

 Bartlett's Mills, that Wiilder and Thedford are both in the township of 

 Bosanquot, and that the name of the station on the Grand Trunk 

 Eailway which was foi'merly called Widder has been changed to 

 Thedford, the two villages of that name being only one mile and a 

 half apart. 



Most of the fossils that have been recorded from these rocks in 

 Ontario are enumerated or described in two papers liy the late Mi-. E. 

 Billings, and in two I'eports by Professor H. Alleyne Nicholson. 



In Mr. Billings paper "On the Fossil Corals of the Devonian rocks of 

 Canada West," published in the Canadian Journal for March 1859, two 

 species, viz. : Heliophyllum Halli of Edwards and Haime and H. tenuv 



September, 1887. 8 



