Marcou.J 
2i2 
[Jan. 21. 
to the mouths of Beauport and St. Charles rivers across the city 
and citadel of Quebec to the western foot of the citadel.” (Fig. 
No. 6.) The part of the section drawn with full lines is the 
actual section as seen from the “Natural Steps” above Montmo- 
rency fall, to the foot of the fall, and then following closely on 
the edge of the St. Lawrence river, at low tide, in passing across 
Beauport beach and la Canardiere, to the old rampart of Quebec, 
the citadel and Champlain street, to the St. Lawrence river. 
And the pointed lines indicate the outlines of the deposits as 
they existed before any denudation, erosion and landslide took 
place; as well as the terra jirma of the Laurentine Mountains on 
the north, and the Champlain continent on the south ; the last 
shore being formed by a plateau composed entirely of Taconic 
strata, which has been upheaved and cleared out of water by the 
great break and total overturn of the whole Taconic system at 
the end of the deposits of the Quebec-city and Swanton states. 
The stratigraphy (strikes, dipping, thickness, succession and 
superposition), the lithology and the paleontology (species, habi- 
tat and geographical distribution) of the great slaty system 
called Taconic by Dr. Emmons, are so completely different from 
those of all the other palaeozoic systems, that it is materially im- 
possible to confound its divisions and great groups with any of 
the Champlain (primitive Cambrian of Sedgwick) , of the Silurian 
(primitive Upper Silurian of Murchison), of the Devonian and of 
the Carboniferous. The sporadic character of habitat of fossils in 
the Taconic system, is general everywhere, and can be used 
safely to indicate the existence of that system. 
The attempt of the geological survey of Canada to synchronise 
and correlate the Quebec-city rocks with the Chazy, or the Lower 
Trenton, or the Upper Trenton, or the Utica slates; to consider 
the enormous mass of slates which form the entire valley of the St. 
Charles river between Quebec-city and the foot of Montmorency 
fall as the equivalent of the Lorraine shales of the State of New 
York and of the vicinity of Ottawa ; to identify the Pointe-Levis 
group with the Calciferous of Chazy village, Argenteuil and Ot- 
tawa (at Gatineau river) ; is made against all sound principles 
used in practical geology. Paleontology after being used first 
wrongly in transferring the primordial fauna above the second 
fauna at Georgia (Vermont), at Pointe-L6vis, and at Bald Moun- 
tain by the paleontologist of the geological survey of the State 
