262 The American Geologist. October, i898 
(12) the expediency of maintaining the spelHng of the word Sakhalin, 
as here used. 
18. Evidence of Recent Great Elevation of New England. By 
J. W. Spencer, Washington, D. C. The paper was a descrip- 
tion of the valley terraces in mountainous parts of New England, il- 
lustrated by sections showing that the declivities of the valleys are not 
by even slopes but by a succession of steps, the plains of which be- 
come terraces farther down the valley. These steps are regarded as 
gradation plains in the changes of the baselevel of erosion, and many 
of the corresponding terraces are hundreds of feet above the floors of 
the valleys. From these features it is inferred that the recent rise of 
the mountainous region can be approximately measured by the sum of 
the hights of the steps. Yet it is not inferred that the elevation 
need to have been from below the sea level; and consequently the 
gravels are not claimed to have been necessarily of marine origin. 
19. The Oldest Paleozoic Fauna. By G. F. Matthew, 
St. John, N. B. This fauna is contained in a series of beds uncon- 
formably underlying the Cambrian system in eastern Canada and 
Newfoundland. The base of the Cambrian in the former country is 
marked by a barren sandstone, and in the latter by conglomerates. 
Erosion of the lower terrane continued up to and included the time 
of the Paradoxides fauna. The relation of these two terranes is com- 
pared to that of the Upper and Lower Silurian in New York or the 
Carboniferous and Subcarboniferous in eastern Canada. The fauna 
known consists of about twenty species. It contains no trilobites, 
either in eastern Canada or Newfoundland. Various forms of the 
family Hyolithidse are the dominant types. Other gastropods allied 
to Capulus and Platyceras occur; also brachiopods; remains of echino- 
derms (cystids?); and corals allied to Archseocyathus and Dic- 
tyocyathus. The thin limestones which occur in the upper half of the 
terrane are supposed to have originated chiefly from foraminifera 
(Globigerina, etc.). 
20. The Oldest Known Rock. By Prof. N. H. Winchell, 
Minneapolis, Minn. After allusion to the vague ideas formerly en- 
tertained of the rocks now included under the term Archean, and still 
surviving in some places, this paper, by a general diagram, presented 
the Archean as recently made out by the Geological Survey of Minne- 
sota. With a brief description of the other members of the Archean 
in Minnesota, the author more particularly described the so-called 
greenstones of this state, which he considers the bottom of the 
Archean scale and the representative of the original crust of the earth 
formed from the molten mass by the earliest consolidation. The 
greenstones are divisible into two parts, one igneous and the other 
clastic, the latter succeeding the former with a confused and some- 
times non-conformable superposition, somewhat as surface eruptive 
rocks might be superposed, in the presence of oceanic action, upon a 
massive of the same character at the same place. The clastic portions 
