WHITEAVE6.] CRETACEOUS FOSSILS FROM BRITISH COLUMBIA. 153 



Queen Charlotte Islands.* The more recent collections made by Dr. 

 Dawson from the Aucella-bearing rocks of British Columbia, and re- 

 ported on in the present paper, shew that ten fairly recognizable 

 species are associated with the Aucellee in that province, and that of 

 these, two, (viz., Astarte Carlottensis and Yoldia arata), besides the two 

 already mentioned, or, counting the Aucella, five out of the entire eleven 

 arc common to these deposits and to Subdivision C of the Cretaceous 

 rocks of the Qaeen Charlotte Islands. Moreover, the fragment of an 

 Ammonitoid shell to which the name Olcostephanus Quatdnoensis was 

 given, in the paper to which reference has been made, proves to be a 

 portion of a small Scaphite, closely allied to the S. osqualis of Sower- 

 by, from the English Upper Greensand, and the Fholadomya Van- 

 couverensis described and figured in the same paper is possibly only a 

 form of the Pleuromya Carlottensis from the Queen Charlotte Islands, 

 in a peculiar and unusual state of preservation. The present writer 

 has long entertained the opinion that the " Lower Shales " (C) of the 

 Queen Charlotte Islands Cretaceous are the homotaxial hut by no 

 means necessarily the contemporaneous equivalents of the Gault of Eng- 

 land and Europe, and it now seems most probable that the rocks in 

 British Columbia in which Aucellfe are the prevalent fossils, are of the 

 same age as the deposits iirst mentioned rather than a little older. 



When the acute inflection of the anterior margin of the right valve 

 immediately under the beak, is not apparent, as is often the case, it is 

 very easy to mistake an Aucella for a small species of Inoceramus, and 

 if, as Eichwald suggests and as the figures and descriptions would 

 seem to imply, the Inoceramus Coquandianus of d'Orbigny, which is 

 described and figured in the '■ Pal^ontologie Erangaise " and the 

 " Paldontologie Suisse, " be identical with one of the varietal forms of 

 Aucella Mosquensis, then in Eurojae also Aucellfe would rank among 

 the characteristic fossils of the Gault. 



* In this connection it may be well to quote the scheme of classification of the Cretaceous 



rocks of these islands which was published by Dr. Dawson in 1880 and based upon stratigraphi- 



oal and lithological grounds, though, as has been elsewhere stated, it does not seem practicable 



to separate subdivisions C, D, and E on purely pateontological considerations. 



Subdivisions of the Cretaceous Formation in the Queen Charlotte Islands, in descending order. 



A. Upper Shales and Sandstones 1.500 feet. 



B- Coarse Conglomerates 2,000 



C- Lower Shales and Sandstones, with coal 5,000 



D. Agglomerates. 



3,500 



E. Lower Sandstones 1,000(?)" 



Total.... 13.000 '■ 



A and B being regarded as Later and C D and B as Earlier Cretaceoas. 



