360 TJie American Geologist. Juue, isoo 
foimdland, etc. But until now the only specimen of an 
organic structure certain and indisputable is the Aspidella 
terranovica Billings, compared to a small Chiton or Patella, 
flattened by pressure. It was found in 1866 by A. Murray 
near St. John's, the capital city of Newfoundland, in the slates 
called in 1843 by Jukes : "St. John's slate," and placed by him 
at the base of his "slate formation." Murray and Howley call 
them: ^'Aspidella slates" of the Huronian rocks ("Report 
Geol Surv. Newfoundland for the year 1881, appendix, pp. 
2-3, St. John's 1882 ; and "On some fossils from the Primor- 
dial rocks of Newfoundland" by E. Billings, in Canadian 
Naturalist, vol vi, p. 478, July, 1872). 
If we consider the column of Primordial strata, published 
by the geological survey of Newfoundland in 1870, all the 
strata below divisions m and I in which Paradoxides or more 
exactly Holmia, make their apparition, we have in divisions 
k, j. i, h, g and f a group of strata with Archwocyat/ms, 
fucoids and annelid (A7'enicoUtes} irsicks, yvhieh. very likely 
is the equivalent and homotaxis of the following formation, 
called II. Esthonian formation of the gulf of Finland, in which 
we may expect to find in Newfoundland one day or another 
the small fauna of the vicinity of Reval (Russia). Below, in 
divisions e, d, c, h and a of the column of the Newfoundland 
Primordial strata, 1,500 feet thick, composed mainly of sand- 
stone, quartzites and slates, we have a great group in Trinity 
bay, which seems to be represented round St. John's by the 
conglomerates, Signal Hill sandstone, and Aspidella slates, 
and the whole constitute the most inferior part of the Lower 
Taconic of Newfoundland, which I think it is proper to call 
Newfoundlandian ( Terrc7ieuvien in French) formation. Until 
now that formation has not yet furnished any certain fossil 
organism except Aspidella. No trilobite has been discovered 
yet, although they Avill probably be ferreted out some day. 
The Newfoundlandian formation constitutes the base of the 
Taconic system, and with the following great division, the 
Esthonian, they form together the Infra-Primordial fauna 
existing on our globe. 
II. Esthonian formation. — A Russian geologist, the engi- 
neer A. Mickwitz, discovered in 1886 some primordial fossils 
at two different spots near Reval in Esthonia, (close by the 
shores of the gulf of Finland); and a year later, in 1887, he 
