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revisions and additions to this interesting flora and latterly 

 he has maintained that the plants are of Silurian age. " 



Sir W. Dawson in his various descriptions of the flora 

 pointed out the Carboniferous aspect of many of the 

 species. "As early as 1866 Geinitz pointed out that the 

 insects described by Scudder as Devonian were on the 

 same slab as a fragment of Pecopteris plumosa" and that 

 this suggested that the strata were of Carboniferous and 

 not Devonian age. The controversy as to the age of the 

 flora did not take a serious aspect until thirty years later 

 when attention was forcibly directed to the matter in 

 connexion with a discussion of the age of the Riversdale- 

 Union formations of Nova Scotia which on floral, litho- 

 logical and stratigraphical grounds were correlated with 

 the Little River and associated strata. 



Dr. J. F. Whiteaves in 1899, in a vice-presidental 

 address to the American Association for the Advancement 

 of Science presented extracts from manuscript reports pre- 

 pared by Dr. Kidston and Dr. David White, in which 

 both of these palseobotanists maintained that the Fern 

 Ledges were of Carboniferous age. Dr. White in another 

 publication very definitely correlated the Fern Ledges with 

 the Pottsville. 



In 1906, Dr. G. F. Matthew commenced a revision of the 

 flora of the Fern Ledges and tookup the position that the flora 

 was Devonian, but later, in 1910, asserted that it was Silurian. 



The classic locality for the Fern Ledges fossil plants is 

 on the shore between high and low water, at Seaside park, 

 a mile west of Carleton a suburb of St. John. "The same 

 strata are repeated along the shore of Duck Cove, where the 

 most prolific beds now lie, for the original sections at the 

 Fern Ledg'es are both nearly worked out and have been 

 covered to a considerable extent by the drifting sand and 

 gravel of the shore. The same series also outcrops to the 

 east of St. John harbour where some plants are to be found 

 if they are carefully sought for, but the extent of alteration 

 in the shales is much greater here, and the fossils are seldom 

 sufficiently well preserved to repay collection, except 

 merely for identification in the field. " The same beds occur 

 to the west of the Fern Ledges locality, and outcrop on 

 the shore at Lepreau harbour where "fossil plants are to be 

 found, but these specimens also have but little value 

 beyond indicating the identity of the beds in which they 

 occur. One may take it that practically all the plants 



