PART I. INTRODUCTION FOREWORD Gaspé Peninsula may be considered as the northeastern termination of the great Appalachian mountain chain. During much of Early and Middle Paleozoic time this region, together with that part of New Brunswick adjoining Chaleur Bay, constituted a portion of the St. Lawrence geosyncline and was the scene of fluctuating submergences and emergences; it was an unstable zone between a positive element—Ungava—on the northwest and the Acadian or New Brunswick geanticline on the southeast. At times, apparently, the St. Lawrence trough was merely an embayment of the Atlantic; at other times it was a waterway connecting the Atlantic with the interior seas of the continent. The Silurian rocks bordering Chaleur Bay along the south shore of Gaspé and the north shore of New Brunswick present features of considerable interest. The Port Daniel and Black Cape sections constitute what is probably the thickest continuous marine succession of Middle Silurian age in North America and one of the thickest known anywhere. The Chaleur strata are abundantly fossiliferous and have yielded 144 new species. The Chaleur series occupies a highly strategic position, paleogeographically, and the faunas afford important evidence of the migrations of marine organisms between northern Europe and the North American interior. Some of the faunas, in fact, have more in common with certain British faunas than with any of the American ones despite the great disparity in distance. LOCATION AND ACCESS The largest terrane occupied by Silurian rocks in the Chaleur Bay region is in Bonaventure County, Gaspé Peninsula, . . .