PORTAGE GROUP. 
241 
continually laboring under difficulties, which are only surmounted by years of patient industry 
and economy. 
We may look forward, however, to a different state of things: in a few years more, this 
portion of the country will wear a different aspect; the improved breeds of cattle and sheep 
will place the owners of the grazing farms in a position of equality with their usually adjudged 
more fortunate neighbors upon the wheat-growing soils ; and the strong arms and manly fronts 
that have borne the toil and exposure will reap the harvest. 
Organic Remains of the Portage Group. 
The paucity of fossils in this group, when compared with those below and above it, is one 
of its most striking characters. Whole days may be spent in searching, in some parts of it, 
without finding more than a few, and perhaps even no shells. In a few fortunate localities, 
some forms have been detected which seem peculiarly typical of the group, and, so far as at 
present known, have never been found elsewhere. They are not only specifically unlike, 
but some of them even generically different from any that have been seen in the other groups 
in the district. 
In this absence of fossil shells, we have a great abundance of marine vegetation, or fucoids, 
and these are very characteristic of the group. Scarcely a locality can be examined, where 
one or more species does not occur. 
The following woodcut illustrates the most abundant form, and one which everywhere 
marks the central portion of this group : 
104 
Fucoides graphica. 
31 
Geol. 4th Dist. 
