Recent Discoveries in the St. John Group. 
97 
other forms of animal life. We study their habits and trace many 
secondary causes, but the “great primary cause,” the secret of life 
itself, is as far from our grasp as ever, and the best that we can hope 
to do is to enter into what a great English writer calls “ the bitter 
Valley of Humiliation, into which only the wisest and bravest men 
can descend, owning themselves forever children, gathering pel)bles 
on a boundless shore.” 
St. Stephen, August 29, 1884. 
AN OUTLINE OF RECENT DISCOVERIES IN THE 
ST. JOHN GROUP. 
By G. F. Matthew, M.A., F.ll.S.C. 
With a Letter of Prof. Alpiieus Hyatt relative to the Pteropods. 
OR some years the Saint John Group has been known as a for- 
mation containing the fullest representation of the oldest 
Cambrian fauna yet discovered in America. 
In Europe this very old fauna is well known, but in America the 
Cambrian rocks which are best known and have been most carefully 
studied do not contain it. These Cambrian rocks of America are 
known as the Potsdam sandstone ; they cover extensive areas along 
the valley of the St. Lawrence and in the Middle and Western 
States, and are thus the oldest Cambrian group, recognized by its 
fauna, in the central region of North America, but they do not con- 
tain any of the species of the St. John Group. 
On the shores of Lake Champlain and along the Hudson River 
another group of Cambrian rocks is found, older than the Potsdam 
sandstone, but even this, so far as we know, contains none of the St. 
John species. In short, nowhere west of the Appalachian Moun- 
ARTICLE IV. 
[Read December 2, 1884.] 
