368 The American Geologist. June,i890 
Let us say at first that the whole region of the island of 
Newfoundland is the most important for the Taconic system, 
all the world over. The very name of Terra nova seems to 
be ironical, for on the whole earth there is not so large an 
area as old and entirely formed of the most antiquated strata 
which were ever deposited on our globe. 
The southeastern part, from Bonavista bay to St. John's 
and Fortune l)ay, with its many profound bays or fjords, its 
numerous settlements, its railroad cuttings, offers the most 
splendid field for researches. There are the best and most 
complete series of strata containing the Infra-Primordial, the 
Primordial and the Supra-Primordial faunas. 
As far back as 1839-40, when the Palaeozoic rocks were 
almost unknown, so far as classifications and palaeontology 
are concerned, my lamented friend, the late J. Beete Jukes, 
made a first reconnoissance of Newfoundland, and classified 
all that we know now as Lower, Middle and Upper Taconic, 
into two great slate formations, called Lower and Upper Slate 
formations. ("General Report of the Geological Survey of 
Newfoundland," London, 1843). No fossil was found by 
Jukes ; and his classification — only very general, without any 
details — is entirely based on stratigraphical principles. 
In 1859, the first fossil found in the whole island was sent 
to professor Salter, in London, who described it under the 
name of Faradoxicles bennettii, showing the existence at 
Branch on the western side of St. Mary's bay, of the Primor- 
dial fauna of Barrande. In the year 1864, a new geological 
survey was begun by Alexander Murray, who soon took for 
his assistant Mr. James P. Howley, an excellent practical 
observer, who has done all the difficult work of stratigraphy 
and classification of the rocks in Newfoundland. Mr. Howley 
has not only surveyed and published the geological maps of 
Conception bay and Brigus bay, where- are all the super-j)osi- 
tions and corrugations of the Taconic system of southeastern 
Newfoundland ("Section Map near Brigus," 1881, and "Penin- 
sula of Avalon," 1881) ; but to him is due the detailed geolog- 
ical section of Conception bay, p. 27 of the Annual Report for 
1868 ; and what is more important the "Column of Primordial 
strata," published in the Annual Report for the year 1870, 
pp. 36, 37, 38 and 39, with a diagram. 
In that column, which Mr. Howley had the great kindness 
