Report of the State Geologist. 



mescens fauna in the Naples valley. In accordance with the recent observa- 

 tions mentioned in our introductory chapter, the stratigraphic position of these 

 beds appears to be the same as that of the typical and original Portage sand- 

 stones of the Genesee valley. Below the High Point beds true Chemung 

 species are scattered through 400 feet of strata. 



In whatever light we may look upon the occurrence of Mantic. intumes- 

 cens at Lime Creek, a thousand miles from its only other manifestion in the 

 United States, it is at least a remarkable fact that it appears there in associa- 

 tion with a peculiar brachiopod fauna, reproduced elsewhere only in western 

 New York and which lies in the stratigraphic horizon of the Portage sand- 

 stones ; an horizon which, in the Genesee valley, still carries the Intumescens- 

 fauna. 



There is still another indication of the presence of the Intumescens-fauna 

 in North America. Mr. J. F. Wiiiteaves, palaeontologist to the Geological 

 Survey of Canada, cites a goniatite from Hay river, forty miles above its 

 mouth, latitude about 60° N. ; " a cast of the interior of three chambers of the 

 septate portion of the shell of a species of Goniatites [not otherwise deter- 

 mined] in which only the lateral lobes and saddles are preserved, each ventral 

 lobe being completely obliterated by weathering."* The figure given of 

 this worn fragment shows, beyond reasonable doubt, that the fossil is &Manti- 

 cocenfs intumescens, the abrasion to which it has been subjected having rounded 

 the lobes and reduced the lateral saddle in an altogether usual manner. Dr. 

 Wiiiteaves' investigations record a list of species from the same locality which 

 indicate, some middle Devonian affinities, others the presence of the Cuboides- 

 fauna (Hypothyris cuboides, Orthis striatuld) and still others the presence of 

 a fauna later in the New York succession, that of the Chemung group, 

 represented by Spirifer disjunctus, Pugnax pugnus, Schizodus Chemungensis. 

 Indeed the list leads to the inference that either a complete differentation of 

 the stratigraphic distribution of these species has yet to be made, or that the 

 occurrence is of similar nature to that presented by the well known Iberg 

 fauna of the Hartz mountains, in which middle Devonian, Cuboides and 

 Intumescens zone index fossils are commingled. A similar inference with 

 regard to the fossils recorded by the same writer from the Ramparts of the 

 Mackenzie river is not unfair. Pugnax puguus and other lower upper 

 Devonian species occur with StritujocepJuihcs Burtmi. The author refers to 

 the presence in the various localities cited by him. in the Mackenzie river 

 basin, of ten species present in the Iowa Devonian (Lime Creek beds and 



. The Fossils of the Devonian Kocks of the Mackenzie River Basin ; in Contrib. to Canadian Palaeontology, vol. 1. 1991. 

 p. 246, pi. 81, fig. 5. 



