LESQUEKEUX.1 EVIDENCE OF AGE OF LIGNITIC GROUP. 277 



new, and of peculiar characters. Both were growing together, apparently 

 in the place where they have been found, as they are inhabited by a 

 small fluvial or land shell, a serpulid, very much like the Spirorhis so 

 commonly observed upon coal-plants of the Carboniferous. This shell 

 is still smaller, and without the transverse strise observable upon the 

 species of the Coal-Measures. 



The conclusion in regard to the presence of land- vegetation in the 

 Silurian had been already recorded by Professor Dawson, but less posi- 

 tively ascertained, however.* He remarks that in the marine lime- 

 stone of Cape Gaspe, holding shells and corals of Lower Helderberg 

 age, they have fragmental stems and distinct rhizomes of Fsilophitnm, 

 adding that these fragments must have been drifted from the land. In 

 the present case, or with the vegetable remains of Michigan, the frag- 

 ments are so delicate, their minute divisions so well preserved, that evi- 

 dently their habitat was in close proximity to the place where they have 

 been found, or rather that they lived in shallow basins of water border- 

 ing the shores, this being especially indicated, as remarked above, by 

 numerous small fluvial mollusks, either placed upon the plants, or scat- 

 tered arouud upon the stone. 



Eemains of this kind, evidence of open land in the Upper Silurian age, 

 may be hereafter more frequently recorded and found also still lower in 

 this formation when more care is given by geologists to the collection 

 and examination of fossil j)lants. Though it may be of the future, these 

 fragments of old lycopodiaceous species in the Silurian appear there as 

 the ancestors of a long and multiple scries of analogous forms, all re- 

 markably well characterized, and which, from the Lower Devonian, in- 

 crease in a remarkable proportion to the base of the Carboniferous, 

 where their remains enter for a large proportion into the composition of 

 the coal. 



The list of the Lower Devonian plants is not as yet very long. But it 

 is a matter of course, for the strata of this formation, at least in the 

 United States, are mostly marine, and the fossil vegetable remains in 

 connection with them represent marine plants which have been till now 

 scarcely studied in this country. That they are very abundant, is proven 

 by the fact that they have become by their presence noticeable characters 

 of whole geological epochs to which they have given their name, as for 

 example, Fucoides Cauda- Galli, for the Cauda-galli grit, the lower mem- 

 ber of the Corniferous period. 



Marine i)lants, though admirably beautiful they may be, some of 

 them at least in their living state, have nothing attractive as fossils. 

 Their fronds and branches are generally flattened by compression, and 

 in that way, too often disfigured and generally mixed into an amor- 

 phoits mass, where the eyes rarely discern any trace of organization 

 or of conhguratiou acceptable as reliable characters. The paleontologist, 

 therefore, needs for the study of these plants the greatest care and a large 

 number of specimens, which are rarely obtainable ; for the plants and 

 their ramifications either cover wide surfaces of hard rock, or penetrate 

 it in various directions. I believe, however, that with time and i)erse- 

 verant rcvsearches, paleontologists will be able to determine a number of 

 those obscure remains, and point out by their presence the distribution 

 of some separate groups of the Devonian. But this subject is out of the 

 present discussion. 



There is in Canada a great sandstone formation known as the Gasp6, 

 over seven thousand feet thick, which has few animal remains in its 



* Fossil Plants of the Devonian and Silurian Formation of Canada, pamphlet (1871), p. 78. 



