CARBONIFEROUS ROCKS IN RUPEET'S LAND. 301 



Dacotah, on the north side of the Height of Land, and 

 in the valley of Red River. 



[There is some evidence of the existence of at least a 

 portion of the Carboniferous system in this region. The 

 fossil procured from the half-breed, who said he collected 

 it from " the solid " rock, at some place on the Red 

 River, is a Productus of the group Semireticulati, all of 

 which appear to be confined to the Carboniferous Series. 

 The specimen is not worn and presents all the appearance 

 of having been freshly broken from the rock.] * 



The presence of fragments of any particular rock in 

 the drift of Canada and elsewhere, affords presumptive 

 evidence of the existence of the parent rock in position 

 some distance to the north of the place where the detri- 

 tus is found, but where the erratics occur in the bed of a 

 river flowing to the north, in which ice of great thickness 

 accumulates, and which moreover is subject to annual 

 overflows, the evidence, under other circumstances, 

 strongly presumptive, must in this case be received with 

 great caution, and regarded rather as an encouragement 

 to continue the search for the Carboniferous Series in both 

 directions from which the boulder might have been 

 carried. 



If rocks occupying a position between the Devonian 

 and Cretaceous Series exist on the flanks of the Riding 

 Mountain, it is probable that traces would have been dis- 

 covered in the drift. The space in which members of the 

 Carboniferous Series or superior formations might occur, 

 is narrowed down to a strip ten miles in breadth between 

 the salt springs south of Dauphin Lake and the outcrop 

 of the Cretaceous shales on the flanks of the mountain. 



* The following label was attached to this specimen, " Given to me by a 

 half-breed ; who declared he picked it from ' solid rock ' in Ked Eiver." 



(Doubtful.) II. Y. H. 



