The Dcvomaii System in Canada. — IVhiteaves. 213 
fossils of the Nictanx and o^ie of the Bear River series are de- 
termined specifically. Of the former it is stated that Hall 
"compares them witli the fauna of the Oriskany sandstone ; 
and they seem to give indubitable testimony that the Nictaux 
iron ore is of Lower Devonian age." A fuller list of fossils 
from Bear river and Nictaux, in which sixteen species are de- 
scribed generically and nine specifically, was published in 
1891.* 
In the second and much enlarged edition of the "Acadian 
Geology," published in 1868, Sir William Dawson confirms 
and elaborates most of the statements about the Devonian of 
Nova Scotia in the first edition and "Supplementary Chapter," 
and figures a new Devonian Spirifer (S. nictavensis) from Xic- 
taux.t He notes the occurrence of "obscure remains, evi- 
dently of land plants" in more or less altered rocks on the 
flanks of the Cobequids, etc., and more particularly the dis- 
covery, in 1866, of "stipes of ferns, apparently of two species, 
a Pinnularia, and branching stems much resembling those of 
Psilophyton, a characteristic Devonian genus," in a gray al- 
tered sandstone or quartzite underlying unconformably a Car 
boniferous conglomerate at Bear brook (now known as Mc- 
Culloch brook) near the Middle river of Pictou. 
Doctor Honeyman, in a paper read before the Nova Scotia 
Institute of Natural Science in November, 1870, and since 
published in its Transactions, describes, as of Devonian age. 
a red band of argillytes on McAra's and McAdams' brooks, 
near Arisaig, which he calls the "McAra's Brook strata," but 
in which he did not succeed in finding any fossils. Later col- 
lectors, however, have been more successful, and in 1885, Mv. 
T. C. Weston, of the Canadian geological survey, obtained 
from 'these argillytes "fragments of plants and fish teeth not 
certainly determinable, together with certain interesting" im- 
prints "like those of Protichnites carbonarius.'"J From the 
same rocks, in 1897, Dr. Ami and Mr. Hugh Fletcher, of the 
same survey, collected fragments of Pterygotus, and of pter- 
*Acadian Geology, Supplementary Note to the Fourth Edition, pp. 
20 and 21. 
tPage 499, figs. 176, a, b. 
^Geological and Natural History Survey of Canada, Annual Kcjiort, 
new series, vol. II, page 68 P. 
