President’’ s Annual Address. 
31 
fauna, now found to be^in at the base of the Cambrian. Such 
also is the status of the imperfect fauna discovered in the 
Catlinite or Indian pipestone beds of Minnesota. Of this it 
can as yet only be said, that it is older than the upper Camb- 
rian. 
For a similar reason a certain amount of doubt attaches 
to the exact age of the Moiiian system of rocks of Anglesea, 
described by Mr. Blake; for on that island the oldest fossili- 
ferous horizon is Ordovician, or post-Cambrian. The Monian 
system is elaborately described by Mr. Blake, but as yet he 
has found no fossils in it; and in fact it appears to consist 
largely of altered sediments, where the fossils, if they ever 
existed, have been obliterated, 
Mr. Walcott has found an obscure discinoid shell, and 
what he regards as the pleura of a trilobite in pre-Cambrian 
strata of the Rocky Mountain region, but this, it will be 
admitted, is but a very imperfect representation of a pre- 
Cambrian fauna. Anything therefore which goes to prove 
the existence of living beings prior to the Cambrian age is 
of considerable importance to the geologist, and to the 
naturalist as well; it is with pleasure, therefore, that I am 
able to call your attention to the existence in your neighbor- 
hood of remains of organic forms of an antiquity far ante- 
dating the Cambrian age. 
As we have at Saint John a definite base to the Cambrian 
system, and since these basal rocks carry the very oldest 
Cambrian fauna known, we are sure of the greater antiquity 
of the organic forms to which I refer. 
Not only is this antiquity shown by the nature of the 
fossils, and the entirely different lithological aspect of the 
series from the Cambrian system, as developed here; but the 
great denudation which the older system had suffered before 
the deposition of the Cambrian beds is shown by the occur- 
rence of a conglomerate at the base of Division I. of the 
Cambrian, which is derived from the limestones of the older 
system. 
Furthermore, between these two systems a third system of 
rocks — the Coldbrook (or Coldbrook and Coastal) — is inter- 
