In 1887 and 1888, Sir J. W. Dawson discoveredindark carbonaceous shales of the Quebec group, exposed at Little Métis, on the north shore of the Lower St. Lawrence, some thin bands of rock largely filled with the remains of siliceous sponges, and similar fossils were found to be sparsely scattered in adjacent beds through a vertical thickness of forty feet. This discovery of an abundant sponge fauna at so low an horizon,inrocks previously considered