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Show DESCRIPTIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS OF FOSSILS FROM VANCOUVER'S AND SUCIA ISLANDS, AND OTHER NORTHWESTERN LOCALITIES. BY F. B. MEEK, Palaeontologist. The fossils described and illustrated in this paper were in part collected by Mr. George Gibbs, geologist of the Northwestern Boundary Survey, under the direction of Archibald Campbell, esq., the commissioner appointed in behalf of the United States Government on the joint commission for the survey of the Northwestern Boundary- line. Most of the Cretaceous species from Vancouver's Island, however, had been some time previously sent on to the Smithsonian Institution, and briefly described, without illustrations, in a paper published by the writer in the Transactions of the Albany Institute ( vol. iv, 1856), for the first time announcing the discovery of Cretaceous rocks at that distant northwestern locality. On the return of the Boundary commission in 1861, the additional collections of fossils obtained during that survey were submitted to the writer for study, and preliminary descriptions of those believed to be new were published in the Proceedings of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences for that year. Soon after, the following more extended descriptions, and the accompanying plates of drawings of these fossils, were prepared for publication in Mr. Campbell's report, in connection with that of Mr. Gibbs, on the geology of the country along the line of the boundary. None of the elaborate geological or natural history results, however, of this survey were published in Mr. Campbell's report; and consequently none of the descriptions and drawings, as presented in this paper, were ever issued. In the mean time, figures of four or five of the Cretaceous species have been published ( mainly without descriptions) in the reports of the geological survey of California; but the other species have not hitherto been illustrated, nor any of them described with much detail. As it has, therefore, been considered very desirable that full descriptions of all of these species, with figures of the same, from the original typical specimens, should be published, permission was obtained through Mr. Gibbs, the geologist of the survey, to publish this paper through whatever agency might be found most convenient. All of the fossils under consideration, with possibly the exception of one Tertiary species, it will be seen, belong to the Carboniferous and Cretaceous systems. Those of Carboniferous age come from the eastern slope of the second principal range of the Rocky Mountains, near a small stream known as Katlahwoke Creek, latitude 49° north, and longitude 114° west from Grteenwich: this being the highest northern point, it is believed, at which rocks ot this age have yet been identified by organic remains along the Rocky Mountain range. They are contained in a hard gray and bluish- gray limestone, breaking with a rough, irregular fracture, and sometimes presenting an obscurely subcrystalline structure. These limestones, according to the observations of Mr. Gibbs, |