2 1 2 'Die American Geologist. Octobur, is9>.i 
William Dawson says that beyond cape John the newer coal 
formation "seems to ovedie, unconformably, a series of hard 
grits, shites and limestones, with scales of Holopty chins, en- 
crinites and fragments of bivalve shells, and which are proba- 
bly of newer Silurian or Devonian age. The last-mentioned 
rocks, with various kinds of trap, form an elevated ridge be- 
longing to the Cobecjuid chain of hills."* 
Influenced, as he elsewhere tells us, by information supplied 
by Sir Charles Lyell, Gesner's earlier statements as to the 
Devonian rocks of Nova Scotia were modified in his "Indus- 
trial Resources of Nova Scotia," published at Halifax in 1849. 
In this volume the paragraph about the Devonian rocks is as 
follows : 
"Old red sandstone or Devonian group. — Above the Silurian strata 
there occur thick beds of conglomerate, bright red, and micaceous 
sandstones, red shale and marly clay. At Advocate Harbour, Parrs- 
boro', Moose river, Horton, Shubenacadie, and other places, these rocks 
are seen dipping beneath the coal measures and gypsiferous red sand- 
stones. The scales of fishes, and other organic remains, found in these 
deposits, are too scanty and imperfect to afford conclusive evidence of 
their relative age; biit from a joint consideration of them, the mineral 
character of the formation and its position, it may be classed as the 
equivalent of the old red sandstone of Europe, or a part of the great 
Carboniferous series. The strata contain but few minerals of impor- 
tance." 
The first edition of the "Acadian Geology," by Sir William 
Dawson, published in 1855, contains a "Tabular View' of Rock 
Formations in Nova Scotia," in which the Devonian is defined 
as including the "fossiliferous slates of Bear river, Nictaux, 
New Canaan, Pictou, Arisaig, etc., and perhaps also parts of 
the metamorphic rocks of the Cobequid and Pictou hills." In 
the fourteenth chapter of this volume the fossiliferous slates at 
Arisaig and the East river of Pictou are regarded as of Devo- 
nian age, on the authority of James Hall, but in a supplement- 
arv chapter, dated August, i860, they are referred to the 
Silurian. Nine "fossils from the Devonian and upper Silurian 
(?) rocks of Nova Scotia" are figured in this volume, but 
none of these are specifically determined and only three are 
Devonian. But, in the supplementary chapter, four of the 
*Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. I, page 
235- 
