24 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETT. [XoV. 20, 



other veins of this district, nothing more has been done to it than 

 simply to prove its existence. 



Discussion. 



Mr. H. Woodward stated that Dr. Nicholson had presented to the 

 British Museum some of the rich specimens of silver-ore mentioned 

 in the paper. 



Mr. D. Forbes corroborated the author as to the richness of the 

 ore. A lump which had been submitted to him, weighing 295 lbs., 

 contained no less than 187 lbs. of silver. He called attention to the 

 resemblance between the vein-stuff from Thunder Bay and that from 

 the Kongsberg silver mines of JS orway, many specimens being so 

 much alike that it was impossible to distinguish them. 



2. Note on the Relations of the Supposed Carboniferous Plants 

 of Bear Island with the Paleozoic Flora of North America. 

 By J. W. Dawson, LL.D., F.R.S., F.G.S., &c. 



I have only recently received the May number of the ' Geological 

 Journal,' containing the interesting pajjer of Dr. Heer on the plants 

 above mentioned, and beg to request permission to address to the 

 Society a few remarks on their supposed equivalency with the 

 American Devonian Flora. 



The plants catalogued by Dr. Heer, and characterizing what he 

 calls the " Ursa Stage," are in part representatives of those of the 

 American flora which I have described as the " Lower Carboni- 

 ferous Coal-measures " (Subcarboniferous of Dana), and whose 

 characteristic species, as developed in Nova Scotia, I noticed in the 

 Journal of the Geological Society in 1858 (vol. xv.). Dr. Heer's 

 list, however, includes some Upper Devonian forms ; and I would 

 suggest that either the plants of two distinct beds, one Lower Car- 

 boniferous and the other Upper Devonian, have been near to or in 

 contact with each other and have been intermixed, or else that in 

 this high northern latitude, in which (for reasons stated in my Report 

 on the Devonian Flora *) I believe the Devonian plants to have origi- 

 nated, there was an actual intermixture of the two floras. In 

 America, at the base of the Carboniferous of Ohio, a transition of 

 this kind seems to occur ; but elsewhere in North-E astern America 

 the Lower Carboniferous beds are usually unmixed with the 

 Devonian. 



Dr. Heer, however, proceeds to identify these plants with those 

 of the American Chemung, and even with those of the Middle 

 Devonian of New Brunswick, as described by me — a conclusion from 

 which I must altogether dissent, inasmuch as the latter belong to 

 beds which were disturbed and partially metamorphosed before the 

 deposition of the lowest Carboniferous or " Subcarboniferous " beds. 



Dr. Heer's error seems to have arisen from want of acquaintance 

 with the rich flora of the middle Devonian, which, while differing in 

 * Geological Survey of Canada, 1871. 



