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18-^

LIBRARY OF
WELLESLEY COLLEGE

PRESENTED BY
FKKDERICK L, HOKSMAN

GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

CANADA.

REPORT OF PROGRESS

FOE THE YEAR 1846-7.

LOVELL & GIBSON, PEINTERS, ST. NICHOLAS STREET.

, 1847.

GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

CANADA.

REPORT OF PROGRESS

FOR THE YEAR 1849-50.

PRINTED BY ORDER OP THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY.

QLoxonto :

PRINTED BY LOVELL AND GIBSON, FRONT STREET.

1850.

-Precentfo

I -2,

GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OP CANADA,

Montreal, May 1, 1850.

Sir,

I have the honor to request you will do me the favor
to present to His Excellency the Governor General, the
accompanying Report of the progress made in the Geo-
logical Survey of the Province, during the year 1849-50.

I have the honor to be,
Sir,

Your most obedient servant,
W. E. LOGAN,

Provincial Geloogist.

To the Hon'ble. James Leslie,

Provincial Secretary,
^c. &,c. &c.

TO HIS EXCELLENCY

THE RIGHT HONORABLE

JAIHES, EARL OF ELGIN AND KINCARDINE, K. T.,

BARON BRUCE OF KINROSS AND OF TORRY,
ONE OF HER MAJESTy's MOST HONORABLE PRIVY COUNCIL,

(Bmmx (Bmml nf %nib^ Snrtji StmBritn/

AVTD

CAPTAIN-GENERAL AND GOVERNOR-IN-CHIEF

IN AND OVER

THE PROVINCES OF CANADA, NOVA SCOTIA, NEW BRUNSWICK, AND THE
ISLAND OF PRINCE EDWARD,

AND VICE-ADMIRAL OF THE SAME.

Montreal, 1st May, 1850.

May it please Your Excellency:

I have the honor to submit to Your Excellency's consideration
the following Report of the progress made in the Geological
Survey of the Province, during the year which has just elapsed.

A description of the soils of the country being one of the objects
contemplated by the Legislative Act making provision for the
Survey, Mr. Hunt was instructed to collect samples in different
parts of both sections of the Province. The analyses of these
have constituted the chief portion of his labors during the winter,
in addition to the examination of various ores, minerals and
mineral waters ; and his Report on the result of his investigations
I have now the honor of transmitting to your Excellency.

Agreeably to the design expressed in the Report of Progress of
the 1st May last, my own attention has been principally devoted
to the examination of the formations of the Eastern Townships, in
their continuation beyond the Chaudière River to the Temis-
couata Portage Road, in which I was aided by Mr. Murray

during the whole, and by Mr. Hunt for part of the time it occu-
pied ; but having been given to understand that an unsuccessful
application had been made to the Legislature, during the last
Session of the Provincial Parliament, by the member for Sague-
nay County, for the means of prosecuting researches for coal by
boring, in the vicinity of Bay St. Paul, w^here the discovery of
supposed indications of the mineral had been proclaimed by
some of the inhabitants, and that the Government were desirous
the geological character of the locality should be examined ;
for this purpose, when we arrived at L'Islet, in the progress of
our exploration on the south side, the opportunity was taken to
cross the St. Lawrence to the locality in question, and two weeks
were employed in investigating the rocks in the neighborhood
of Bay St. Paul, and also those of Murray Bay, which pre-
sent features of a similar kind. The time thus subtracted
from the exploration of the south side, disabled us from effect-
ing so complete an examination in some parts of the region
as we could have wished ; but indeed, in respect to the whole
of that region, the very complicated contortions of its strata,
their frequent metamorphosed condition, and the great extent of
surface that still remains unreclaimed from the forest, and unre-
presented on any map, are such as would require a much longer
exploration than has been bestowed upon it, or than can perhaps
be at present awarded to it with due regard to other parts of the
Province, to follow out the details of its physical structure.
Many of the facts that have been ascertained appear isolated,
and would require a knowledge of many more to bring into view
their harmonious relation as parts of a whole, and it can only be
a very general sketch of some of the main geological features of
the district, that can at this moment be presented in connexion
with and continuation of those exhibited in last year's Report.

In proceeding to place before Your Excellency some of the
prominent facts ascertained during the season, it will be conve-
nient to give precedence to those derived from Bay St. Paul and
Murray Bay, as the rocks there met with support those consti-
tuting the south side of the St. Lawrence, and by placing them
first, an ascending order of sequence will be maintained in the
formations that enter into the present description.

BAY ST. PAUL AND MURRAY BAY.

These two bays, about seven leagues apart, are the termina-
tions of two valleys, scooped out of a mountainous country, and
resemble one another in almost every respect, with the exception
of their direction. The valley of Bay St. Paul, through which
flows the River Gouffre, has a north and south bearing, while
that of the Murray Bay River in the portion of its course at pre-
sent included, runs about S. 55 E. ; the former is the one further west,
and it follows that the valleys approach one another in the inte-
rior ; so that about ten or twelve miles up the Murray Bay River
the distance between them is not over four or five miles, and
there appears to be a depression from the one to the other along
the foot of a range of high hills in which the Gouffre springs,
but across which the Murray Bay River runs in a deep gorge,
its sources being in the vicinity of those of the Montmorency
River. From this vicinity it flows first to the north-east and
then turns at nearly a right angle to this course, about eleven
miles on the road from Bay St. Paul to Chicoutimi on the
Saguenay. This road runs through the valley of the Gouffre,
and another one joins it coming from the valley of the Murray
Bay River and passing the Ruisseau des Frênes, the Little Lake
and Nairne's Lake, which are all tributary to this river. Both
the valleys display a considerable amount of settlement for nine
or ten miles up ; the soil in both, to heights of 300 to 400 feet, is
generally strong clay, with occasional patches of sand and gravel,
and in the middle of the valleys these materials are found singu-
larly distributed, not in even extensive layers, but in a multitude
of small hills or hummocks, often of a perfectly conical form,
thickly aggregated in many parts, and affording a marked char-
acteristic. The soil of the uplands appears also in general
argillaceous, but rising towards the mountains it becomes
remarkably stony. The block of country between the valleys is
mountainous, and so is the coast both above and below them, and
the general elevation must be considerable, perhaps over a thou-
sand feet above the level of the St. Lavn:-ence. These elevated
parts however, often shew excellent farms, from the fields of
which the stones have been removed with great labor, and the

farms produce good crops of oats, barley, rye, pease and pota-
toes, in addition to which in the valleys, before the Hessian fly
became so destructive in Lov^^er Canada, abundant crops of v^^heat
used to be obtained, and there can be little doubt, if due atten-
tion were paid to the application of manure, the mountainous
character of the district would not deprive it of considerable
agricultural value. A narrow strip of country on the margin of
the St. Lawrence, occupying about fifteen miles of the distance
between Bay St. Paul and Murray Bay, is marked by some of
the same features as the valleys ; included in the distance is the
spot called Les Eboulis, displaying the ruins oi' a great land-slip^
by which a vast mass of clay, sand and gravel has been preci-
pitated from the higher ground and pushed forward into the St.
Lawrence, where it is now spread out into an area occupying
about one third of a square mile ; the surface presents the mam-
millated character marking the lower levels of the valleys,
whose aggregated hummocks may be due to a similar cause.

The rock formations met with in the district, in ascending
order, are as follows :

1. Metamorphic Group.

2. White Quartz rock. {Potsdam Sandstone.)

3. Calciferous Sand rock.

4. Bituminous Limestone. {Trenton.)

1. Metamorphic Group. — The prevailing rock which consti-
tutes this mountainous tract of country is gneiss, sometimes of
a granitic and sometimes of a syenitic character. On the west
side of the valley of the Gouflre, where a path from Côte St.
Antoine crosses à temporary foot bridge on the Bras du Nord-ouest,
the rock is a true gneiss, with black mica ; it holds garnets in
abundance, and its stratification shews a dip S.E. mag. <30°.
Near the Rivière des Mares the rock was found to consist of
opaque white quartz and feldspar with black mica, so aggregated
as to give an excellent building stone. On the uplands west of
St. Urbain Church, where the rock holds great masses of titan-
iferous iron ore, the mica was replaced by hornblende ; and on
the east side of Bay St. Paul, its constituents were greenish feld-
spar, translucent white quartz and black hornblende. On the

west side of Murray Bay, above White Cape, the gneissoid cha-
racter of the rock is very distinctly displayed in a set of beds,
which are marked by diversities of color allied to red, green,
black and white ; these beds are granitic, but very quartzose,
and there are some bands among them that have the aspect of
a slightly micaceous quartz rock; crystals of hornblende are
sparingly disseminated in some of the beds, and epidote is pre-
sent in others. The dip of the beds in the locality is N. W. mag,
<30° to 35°, and there is present among them a large grained
red granitic dyke, running in general with the strike, but here
and there shewing its intrusive nature by cutting the basset edges
of the gneissoid beds at a very small angle. On the east side of
Murray Bay near Les Ecorchis, the gneiss presents the aspect
of a dark gray compact, slightly micaceous hornblende slate,
which would yield excellent flagging ; in some of the layers
epidote is met with. The gneiss is here also cut by a very
coarse-grained dyke running generally with the stratification
and consisting of quartz and opaque white feldspar, the
latter in large cleavable forms, while hornblende prevails on
each side of the dyke towards its contact v^th the gneiss,
A little farther to the eastward, before reaching Le Heu,
there is a very great and conspicuous large grained white
dyke of a similar character ; although it runs with the gneiss-
oid layers in direction and often in dip, it is yet occasionally
seen to cut down through them. It holds a large preponder-
ance of feldspar, and in many places contains rather thickly
disseminated small pink garnets ; on each side of the dyke for
some feet, the rock, consisting almost wholly of mica, is set with
a great profusion of large coarse imperfectly crystallized garnets
of the same pink color as the small ones ; they are accompanied
by small quantities of graphite, and the garnet-bearing part is so
interlaced and cut up by white strings and branches emanating
from the main dyke, that it is difficult, wifhout a little study, to
say whether it belongs to the country or the intruded mass.
Near a rivulet between Les Ecorchis and Le Heu this garnet-
bearing dyke is suddenly brought up against the more regular
gneissoid beds to the west, by a transverse dislocation, which
heaving its continuation out of sight, (but in which direction it is

uncertain,) serves, with an anticlinal fold in the beds to the
west, to illustrate the disturbed condition of the strata.

The gneiss of this district belongs to that metamorphic group of
rocks, which in previous Reports has been described as existing on
the Ottawa, and as traceable thence, removed back usually to a
distance of twelve to twenty miles from the north-west margin
of the St. Lawrence, all the way to Cape Tourmente below Quebec,
where it comes upon the river and from which it is washed by
it to Bay St. Paul. None of the highly crystalline limestones,
which on the Ottawa are so marked a feature of the group,
were observed in the region under attention, but the examina-
tion has been of too limited and cursory a nature to determine
their absence.

2. White Quartz rock, — This rock, which overlies the previous
formation, was not seen at Bay St. Paul, but was met with on
the west side of Murray Bay, above White Point, and at two
spots on the east side, one of them within sight of the church
just before reaching the Cape which it is necessary to double in
proceeding along the beach to Les Ecorchis, and the other close
by Les Ecorchis. In these three localities the formation con-
sists of white translucent slaty quartz rock, rendered cleavable by
the presence of silvery mica, into plates of half an inch to two or
three inches thick, which appear to be conformable with the strati-
fication ; cracks in the rock occasionally present green stains
due to carbonate of copper. If it were not for the fact, that in
the different localities of its presence it succeeds different quali-
ties of the gneissoid beds, while a uniformity is preserved in the
character of the strata that succeed it, the rock might be mis-
taken for a more than usually quartzose member of the subjacent
formation, from which however it might perhaps be occasionally
distinguished by a want of conformity in its stratification. The
thickness of the deposit at Les Ecorchis is about forty-five feet ;
but it is not improbable, that lying on an uneven surface, the
inequalities of which it may fill up, it may be found to exceed
this in other places. There appears to be little doubt that this
rock is equivalent to the Potsdam sandstone of New York.

3. Calciferous Sand rock. — ^Resting conformably on the previous
formation, there is met with a calcareous sandstone, or arena-

ceous limestone, of which, though observed both at Bay St. Paul
and Murray Bay, the sequence is determined by the exposures
at the latter place. At Murray Bay the rock was met with at
White Cape ; the point which there bounds the boat cove on the
south is composed of it ; in the cove some beds, partially con-
cealed by sand, dip N. W. mag. <5r, but at the small point
mentioned, the dip gradually changes by a fold in the strata to
E. mag. <58°. With this dip, the beds shew a breadth of about
twenty-three yards, which would give a thickness of fifty-eight
feet. As a mass, the rock is here a calcareous sandstone, but
the arenaceous layers are interstratified with occasional bands
of limestone ; the uppermost bed is of limestone, and there are
some few of the same kind near the bottom. In one or two of
the arenaceous beds there are quartz pebbles as large as hens*
eggs, constituting them conglomerates, but in general the grains
range frofti the size of snipe to that of partridge and pigeon shot,
and they are usually so well rounded as to give an oolitic aspect
to the rock ; they consist both of limestone and quartz ; some-
times the calcareous but in general the siliceous grains prevail,
and the latter frequently to a considerable extent ; the color
of the beds is in general a dirty white. To the west of the boat
cove there are two hummocks of the rock, forming the bluff
from which White Cape takes its name. The character of the
strata here displayed very much resembles what has already
been described ; the face of the cliff shews a section giving
a thickness of between fifty and sixty feet, across a shallow
trough in the strata, which on the west side, rise up at an angle,
as displayed on the beach, of seventy degrees, maintained for
sixteen yards, which would give a thickness of forty-five feet
more. There then occurs an irregularity, beyond which a dip of
N. 45° E. mag. <85^ to 90°, is maintained for about thirty-five
yards, and the 105 feet resulting from this may probably present
a repetition of the two previous measurements. A gravel
covered space of about fifty yards in a south-west direction
occurs between the calcareous sandstone and a cliff of gneiss,
the strati of which dip N. 45° W. mag. <49°, moderating to
<30° a short distance in the strike ; the subjacent white quartz
rock may be covered up in this interval, but it was not seen.

Some of the beds at White Cape are fossiliferous ; a coral occurs
in one of the coarse beds, and a convoluted shell, probably of the
genus Euomphalus, in the more calcareous layers. On the east
side of Murray Bay, where the white quartz occurs within sight
of the church, it is immediately followed by a coarse conglome-
rate bed, which though on the whole conformable with it, fills
up hollows and inequalities in its surface. The conglomerate
appears to be composed of various moderately sized fragments
of the quartz rock, and even considerable boulders or large
angular blocks of it, held in various attitudes, in a partially
calcareous cement, from which it would seem that the elements
of the quartz rock had become indurated before the deposit of
the conglomerate. This conglomerate is the base of the calci-
ferous sand rock, and it is followed by finer calcareo-arenaceous
layers ; but though the succeeding formation makes its appear-
ance not far from them, there are too many irregularities in the
vicinity to give data to determine the total thickness of the
deposit. Near Les Ecorchis the development is more complete ;
the lower part of the deposit there consists of calcareous sand-
stone, with a band or two of conglomerate, holding pebbles as
large as pigeons' eggs, followed by gray and whitish layers,
which weather of a yellowish white, assuming a light drab
while the stone is wet. These are followed by a set of calcareo-
arenaceous beds, which, though of a nearly uniform light gray
color in fresh fractures, weather to a yellowish white and a
reddish white, the two colors alternating with one another in
the upper half of the deposit. The total thickness of the deposit
is about sixty feet.

4. Bituminous Limestone, — The calcareous sandstones are
followed by bituminous limestone beds, which are highly fossili-
ferous, and these in some parts display a considerable thickness.
The following is a section at Les Ecorchis, in which are given,
in descending order, all the deposits in succession to the gneiss ;
Dark gray bituminous limestone, holding numerous fossils ; this

constitutes the face of the cliff, say 150 feet

Dark gray bituminous thin bedded limestone, holding fossils 12

Dark gray bituminous thin bedded limestone, somewhat nodular,

holding fossils ,.,......«.. 16

Light gray calcareous sandstone ; slight differences of shade alternate,
the darker weathering to a reddish white, the lighter to a
yellowish white

Light gray calcareous sandstone, in a thick bed, weathering to a
yellowish white

Light gray calcareous sandstoné*, in alternating differences of shade,
weathering yellowish white and reddish white

Light gray calcareous sandstone, weathering yellowish white

Light gray calcareous sandstone, weathering reddish white.

Light gray calcareous sandstone, weathering to a yellowish white ;
when wet the exterior of the stone is a light drab

Light gray and whitish sandstone, of a calcareous character

Light gray calcareous sandstone, some of the beds of a conglomerate
character, holding quartz pebbles as large as pigeons' and hens'
eggs

Measures imperfectly exposed, in which a few alternating beds of
gray and white quartz rock or sandstone are seen

White quartz rock, divided into plates by the presence of silvery
mica

Measures concealed, supposed to be white quartz rock, succeeding
which gneiss appears

Total thickness displayed 280

The fossils met with in the bituminous part of the section, fi

several of them having been found loose at the base of the cliff }|

at Les Ecorchis, adopting the nomenclature of Mr. Hall of New j

York, in the first volume of his Palœontology, are as follows : — ;

Chœtites lycoperdon, Stictopora ? -» ? Streptoplasma cornicu-

lum, S, crassa, Receptaculites neptuni, Schizocrinus nudosuSj ||

Leptena alternata, L. sericia, Orthis pectinella, O, ? Atrypa :>

ambigua, Orthoceras ? Platynotus trentonensis, Calymene ■

senaria. ;j

At Bay St. Paul there is a great development of bituminous f!

limestone at Cap au Rets, between which and the gneiss running ||

out into Cap Rouge, the cliff exposes a section nearly at right '\
angles to the strike of the strata. The general dip is westward,

at an angle increasing irregularly from sixteen up to sixty degrees, ji

as it approaches the gneiss ; between the limestone and the gneiss . ;

there is an interval of concealment of about fifty yards across ^

7
1
3

13
7

25
6

the measures, in which the calciferous sandstone may perhaps
exist ; but independent of this, and making an allowance for one
or two twists visible in the cliff, there is breadth enough com-
pletely denuded to give a thickness of between 600 and 700 feet,
the whole of w^hich consists of dark^ray and black bituminous
limestone, with the exception of a band of white sandstone, within
about thirty-five feet of the bottom : the calcareous beds are of
various thicknesses, separated by partings of black bituminous
shale. The rock is fossiliferous, and among the remains here

met with are Fucoides ? Graptolithus amplexicaule, Asterias

matutina, Leptena sericia, Orthis testudinaria, Atrypa extans^

Avicula trentonensis ? Calymenesenaria, C. -? smd Trinucleus

concentricus, — nearly all, as well as those occurring at Les Ecor-
chis, belonging to the Trenton limestone of New York. There
can therefore be little doubt of the true age of the deposit, and
of the fact that it is far beneath the recognized carboniferous
rocks of North America.

On the west side of Bay St. Paul, the same bituminous lime-
stone is met with at the mill on the Rivière au Moulin. The
deposit is here seen to dip eastward, and there is evidence to
prove that it is brought into position by a dislocation. The bitu-
minous beds abut against the gneiss without the intervention of
the calciferous sandstone, or white quartz rock, and at the point of
contact, the slope, which near the mill does not exhibit more than
twenty to thirty degrees, is suddenly turned up on one side of the
stream, at the cascade, to sixty and on the other to ninety degrees,
while in one spot the strata, conforming to the face of the cliffy
even overhang the perpendicular. The direction of the junction
of the two rocks is N. 60° W. mag. ; but following up the ravine,
above the edge of the cascade, in a direction nearly transverse
to this, after passing over a few yards of the gneiss, the limestone
again occurs, and continues present on one side of the ravine,
while gneiss occupies the other for the space of nearly fifty
yards, to the second vertical leap in the fall. Here a face of
gneiss presents itself, running N. 35° W. mag. ; and on the east
and west sides of the limestone thus limited, mineral veins occur
holding small unworkable quantities of galena, which was tried
for silver, but gave no trace. The gangue in which the ore is

set is composed of calcspar, partly colorless and transparent,
and partly opaque white, mingled with apple green apatite, or
phosphate of lime. The veins on the west side of the limestone
are smaller than those on the east, but they are all probably
ramifications connected witJi one great line of disturbance ; on
the east side there are two parallel veins in the space of six feet?
one of them being three feet wide, including a fragment of gneiss-
oid rock, occupying half the breadth. Veins of a similar char-
acter, running in a nearly parallel course, were met with near
Les Ecorchis, where they cut all the formations.

The direction of these veins, though it runs with the strike of
the limestone and its associated formations as they appear in
the vicinity, is yet transverse to the great trend of the rocks
through the country, which is from south-west to north-east, and
such dislocations as those the veins are connected with, have
probably been instrumental in giving the formations of the val-
leys of Bay St. Paul and Murray Bay, their peculiar geographical
distribution. These formations lie in the valleys in the shape of
long irregular troughs ; in the valley of the Gouffre, the bitumi-
nous limestone, which at the mouth of the River has a breadth of
two miles, was traced up to St. Urbain, a distance of about ten
miles, reaching it without any disruption probably of its conti-
nuity ; it is contracted however to a width of half a mile a little
over half way up, at St. Croix and the Rivière Remy, but it widens
again to a mile, before it terminates above the Church of St.
Urbain. In Murray Bay, and on the coast below, it presents
upwards of six miles to the St. Lawence, and runs as many up
the Murray Bay River, with a general breadth of two miles. At
the bridge however near the mouth of the River, an undulation
brings to the surface a narrow belt of the gneiss, which, running
in an east and west course, approaches the coast beyond Le
Heu, and there appears to be another parallel undulation imme-
diately behind Les Ecorchis. Proceeding along the road from
the Murray Bay River, by the Ruisseau des Frênes, there occurs
a small patch of the limestone before reaching the Little Lake,
and a larger one appears to extend from the Little Lake to
Nairne's Lake. The latter patch is not over ten miles from the
limestone of St. Urbain, and it is not impossible there may be

others between the valleys of theGoufFre and Murray Bay Rivers
in the depression that runs from the one to the other. Between
the mouths of these Rivers, on the St. Lawrence, the narrow fif-
teen miles strip of country mentioned as bearing some of the
general characteristic features of these valleys, is underlaid by
bituminous limestone ; it extends from a point about half a mile
above Les Eboulis to Little Malbaie, and displays some pictu-
resque scenery, where intersected by the streams that descend
from the gneissoid mountains behind. In this respect, nothing
can surpass the romantic dell immediately near the residence of
Dr. LaTerrière, where a succession of lofty waterfalls, towering
precipices and wooded crags, combine to offer points of view of
most striking beauty. This strip of calcareous country no doubt
marks the general course of the outcrop of the Trenton lime-
stone and the two inferior formations, in their progress down the
St. Lawrence, the north bank of which appears to be the main
boundary of those deposits, from Cape Tourmente to Labrador.
In most parts of the distance they are concealed by the water,
but they occasionally come upon the land in narrow strips and
isolated spots, and from this main outcrop the limestones of the
Gouffre and the Murray Bay Rivers are long tongue-like projec-
tions, with, in the latter case, outlying patches beyond.

Tertiary Deposit.

In the valleys of the Gouffre and the Murray Bay Rivers, as
well as along the margin of the St. Lawrence between them,
there are at various parts great accumulations of clay and sand
with some gravel; and it is very perceptible that while they
often present a confused aggregation of hummocks in the lower
grounds, at higher levels, lying in horizontal beds, they are
arranged into a succession of opposite terraces of equal height
along the sides of the valleys, and corresponding terraces at
intervals along the St. Lawrence, all probably marking ancient
beaches or periods of retrocession of a tertiary sea by the eleva-
tion of the land. In the valley of the Gouffre a rude attempt
was made with a pocket level to ascertain the height of some
of these terraces. Two of them were well marked, and the ap-
proximation arrived at in regard to them, was one hundred and

thirty feet or the lower, and three hundred and sixty feet for
the higher, over high water mark, in Bay St. Paul. The depo-
.sits in which these terraces were worn, consisted of clay, con-
taining marine shells, among which were Tellina groenlandica,
T. calcarea, Saxicava rugosa, with the genera Nucula^ Venus, My-
tiluSf and Balanus; and their presence was traced up to a
height of three hundred and ninety feet, though there was not at
the spot any well indicated terrace. At Little Malbaie there
were no less than six terraces, plainly visible one above another,
but the heights were not ascertained. In the valley of the Mur-
ray Bay River, a great thickness of clay was met with on each
side, and land slips had exposed in some parts nearly vertical
sections of the horizontal beds making up the mass. On the
Mailloux River, falling into the Bay a little above the church,
a section of sixty to eighty feet is exposed, and near this the stream
is precipitated in a cascade over a very steep face in the deposit,
which is evidently fast yielding to the destructive agency of the
water. The presence of moisture in some bed low down in the
cliff, more arenaceous than others, and the want of support in
front permit movements to occur, causing cracks at short dis-
tances from the edge ; the water of the stream penetrates into
these, and meeting with the more arenaceous layer escapes
through it, quickly softening the base upon which the superin-
cumbent clay reposes ; the weight of this forces the bottom to
slip out, and a slice of the cliff gently slides down to the foot of
the cascade, gradually assuming a more and more recumbent
position in its progress, the original surface of the slice gradually
sloping more towards the cliff, until at last it remains nearly
facing it. The ruin is soon swept away by the stream, and as
the cascade thus recedes, the sides display precipices from which,
with the aid of rain, slides descend in the same manner, though
at greater intervals of time. The summit of the deposit in this
part exhibits a nearly horizontal surface, with the exception of
a channel of no great depth for the river, for a mile up the val-
ley to the foot of an upward step composed of sand, which
appears to overlie the clay ; this step not improbably indicates
an ancient beach. By landslips a vast body of clay has been
swept away, not only from the valley of the Mailloux, but no

doubt also from those of the Gouffre and the Murray Bay Rivers,
both of which may at some ancient period have been nearly
filled with the deposit up to the height of the terraces.

Economic Materials,

Among the economic materials of Bay St. Paul and Murray
Bay, it is a matter of regret that I have it not in my power to in-
clude the coal reported to have been discovered there. Upwards
of two years since, the Commissioner of Crown Lands transferred
to me a few specimens of this mineral, which had accompanied
a petition from Messrs. Julien Bouchard and Abraham Menard,
of Bay St. Paul, to Your Excellency, representing that they had
discovered such indications of its existence on their farms, as in-
duced them to request an examination of the locality, by a com-
petent person, at the expense of the Government. Knowing
the general strike of the formations through the country, and
being aware, from previous examination, as stated in previous
reports, that a band of calcareous rock of the age of the Trenton
limestone of New York, which is well ascertained to be far below
the recognized carboniferous deposits of North America, carried
its outcrop in a continuous line from Grenville on the Ottawa,
to Beauport below Quebec, on the north side of the St. Law-
rence ; and that another formation (contemporaneous with the
Hudson River group of New York,) superior to the Trenton
limestone, but also far beneath the same carboniferous deposits,
extended on the south side of the St. Lawrence, from Point Levi
to Cape Rosier, it was but reasonable to infer that the calcareous
rocks of Bay St. Paul, which have been mentioned in published
geological papers by Capt. Baddeley and Capt. Bayfield, were of
the Trenton era. The existence of workable coal beds in them,
so far below their ordinary position, would have been a new fact,
not only in relation to the carboniferous eras of other continents,
but to that of North America itself, while it would also have ap-
peared strange that the Trenton limestone, which in Canada and
the United States has been examined over thousands of miles
without any trace of true coal, should shew so novel and excep-
tional a feature at Bay St. Paul. \ The improbabilities of the case
induced me to consider that it would not be expedient to anticipate

the visit that would be made to the locality in its turn in the due
course of examination ; but the application made to the Legisla-
ture at its last Session by the Member for Saguenay County, for
the purpose of moving the Government to incur the expense of
prosecuting researches there for the mineral, by the costly me-
thod of boring, and the express desire of the Government to
know whether the geological character of the locality would
justify such an experiment, have prompted me, sooner than in-
tended, to effect the examination from which the facts detailed
in the geological description which has preceded have resulted.
These facts, as they are related to the general trend of the for-
mations through Lower Canada, to the sequence of those rocks
which are associated in the locality, and to the character of the
fossils with which the limestone of Bay St. Paul abounds, fully
bear out that the age of this calcareous deposit is precisely
such as was anticipated ; and it only remains to be considered
whether the circumstances which have been adduced as af-
fording indications of the existence of coal, are of such a conclu-
sive nature as to raise up a probability that the Trenton lime-
stone in Bay St. Paul presents conditions new to the formation,
and new to geology.

The fact upon which the existence of coal was predicated, was
that several persons worthy of credit,having visited certain springs
of water on the farms of J. Bouchard and A. Menard, had ex-
tracted with their own hands, and seen others extract from the
springs, pieces of coal of good quality, which were supposed to
have been brought to the surface by the force of the water from
some coal seam in the rock beneath. The discovery of such spe-
cimens in such a situation, in a country which had been settled for
centuries, and in which pit coal had been long in use, would have
attracted no attention whatever ; their presence would have been
attributed to some one of the thousand accidents connected
with the requirements and works of man, which might have
brought them there ; but in a district reclaimed from its original
forest within a comparatively recent period, where the history
of the fields in which the specimens were found was known to
the present cultivators, from the time those fields were first
cleared, it was not by them supposed probable that the presence

of the fragments could be due to any forgotten accident. The
specimens are pieces of excellent clean, hard, compact, brilliant,
black, bituminous coal, bearing the undoubted evidence of stra-
tification, and varying in size from one eighth of an inch to
nearly one inch cube. They were chiefly taken, I was informed,
from the vicinity of a spring, on the property of J. Bouchard ;
this property presenting a gradually rising surface from the
river to the hills behind, is situated on the left side of the Goufire,
about two miles and a half or three miles north from Cap au
Rets at its mouth. The spring is removed about three furlongs
to the east of the road which runs up the valley, and giving a
rather small but constant supply of water it rises immediately
behind a block of limestone, through a sandy clay of a lead
color. The clay holds, but in no great abundance, small and
large fragments of limestone and gneiss, some of them worn into
pebbles and boulders, and is covered with a thin layer of vegeta-
ble soil in which, where cut through within a foot or two of the
spring, according to the report given me, the larger portion of
the pieces of coal was found, while some were obtained from
the mud of the spring itself. A trench of a few yards in length
had been cut back from the spring into the rising ground, expos-
ing the clay for a foot or two in depth ; in this trench, I was in-
formed, a few small pieces of coal had been met with. After
the locahty had been inspected by me, two men were set to
work to clear out the trench, and to expose fresh ground on its
bottom and sides, which they effected after a full day's labor.
Some small fragments of coal were found in the ground that
had been previously moved, but the most careful examination
could detect none in the freshly exposed parts, either of the clay
in the trench, or in the vegetable mould.

Immediately at the issue of the spring, and just above the
block of limestone mentioned, the clay was softer than at a very
short distance back from it, and the water in rising, moved the
very fine grains of sand in contact with it ; but the force did not
appear to me sufiicient to drive up fragments of coal of nearly
an inch cube, and it seemed probable if such had been placed in
the pipe giving escape to the water through the deposit, that its
flow would rather have displaced the soft fine sand and clay

immediately around the fragments than the fragments themselves.
The spring has existed as long as the memory of the oldest
inhabitants of the valley can carry them back, and there are
no means of placing any definite limit to its antiquity ; but if
it is of very ancient date, and has from time to time brought
such fragments of coal to the surface, it would appear but rea-
sonable to expect that a larger quantity should have been natu-
rally accumulated than has been found, and particularly of fine
grains, v^hich on the contrary seem to be especially scarce.
In districts where coal seams are known to exist, and where,
through fissures arising from dislocations cutting the strata,
springs of a much more powerful character well out, it is not
usual to meet with such fragments of coal as have been pre-
sented to me, issuing from them ; and the presence of fine grains
even in such situations, if it could be proved that the ground had
never been artificially disturbed, would be attributed rather to
a derivation from the outcrop of some seam in the vicinity,
than an escape from some part deeply seated beneath. But if
the specimens from Bay St. Paul were from an outcrop, they
could scarcely be so hard and fresh as they are. A coal seam
at its outcrop is always more or less injured by atmospheric
influences ; it is always weak and friable and often reduced to
a pulverulent condition, and it* is very probable that one of the
agencies by whicl). it is thus brought to ruin is the decomposition
of the iron pyrites which is disseminated more or less in almost
all coal beds. It is to the decomposition of the iron pyrites that
is due the great deposit of hydrated peroxyd of iron, usually oc-
curring wherever springs issue from the seams, and so constantly
does this red water, which among the miners of Wales is desig-
nated the blood of the coal, accompany the seams, that it affords
on e of the effective means of tracing them along their basset edges.
The spring on Mr. Bouchard's land gives no red deposit, and
while the pieces of coal are firm and hard, iron pyrites is ex-
posed on some of them, quite free from the tarnish of decompo-
sition, which it is not likely it would be if the fragments had
been exposed at the surface for a long series of years.

About three or four furlongs east of the spring the gneissoid rocks
rise up, there constituting one limit of the valley ; and about

fifty yards west from the spring the bituminous limestone of the
vicinity is exposed, dipping S. 70^ W. mag. <32^ ; the limestone
is seen also between 200 and 300 yards from the road on a
farm six acres below Bouchard's, and on another still lower it
is met with at about the same distance from the road, and occurs .
at intervals for a space of 500 yards across the measures.
From these facts there can be no doubt that the spring is under-
laid by the limestone, and none also that the beds of the
locality all come out in Cap au Rets, where it is probable nearly
the whole thickness of the formation is exposed, and at any rate
all that part of it beneath the spring, down to the calciferous
sandstone. In the whole of this great natural section, which
discloses more of the mineral character of the ground than
could be ascertained by a most expensive boring, the closest
scrutiny did not enable me to detect any trace of coal. It
is true there was a concealment in the cliff of about fifty
yards between the limestone and the gneiss, which may have
comprehended the calciferous sandstone and the white quartz
rock ; the depth of covering, however, from the steepness
of the clifi* could not be very great, and considering that the
lower beds of the limestone were tilted up to an angle of sixty
degrees, and that the strata in the concealed part would run into
the clilf at the same, it is very probable, if there had been any
seam of coal in place beneath, some portion of its ruins would
have been torn out and brought down into a short talus of
detrital material, here present just above high water mark.
The chance of the exposure of such ruins was enhanced by the
fact, that from the edge of the clift^ at a point which the lime-
stone sloping up from the beach would very nearly attain, to
within twenty feet of the gneiss at the base, there ran a channel
across the intermediate measures which had been worn out in
the loose-surfaced deposit, by the operation of sliding fire-wood
down the clifi*; but neither in this channel nor in the talus
were any traces of coal discovered; and it may farther be
remarked, that there were no evidences of it in the formations in
question where exposed in Murray Bay. The coal cannot be
from the gneiss beneath, for, associated with such a rock, its
character would have been anthracitic, and not bituminous.

Wherever workable seams of coal have yet been found on the
face of the globe, the evidences connected with them prove
beyond a doubt, that their origin is due to great accumulations
of vegetable matter, which has been converted into a mineral
condition. The vegetable structure is detected in the mineral
by microscopic examination, and as might be expected, the strata
associated with coal beds are profusely stored with fossil plants ;
even where the seams are too thin to be workable, or so thin as
to be readily passed over without great attention, the vegetable
remains disseminated in the masses of rock dividing the seams,
are still in vast abundance. Jn the section of the Nova Scotia
coal rocks, at the Joggins, for example, as detailed in the report
transmitted to the Government in 1844, it will be found that in a
thickness approaching 15,000 feet, seventy-six coal seams occur
with a total thickness of no more than forty-four feet, and that
for thousands of feet in some parts, no coal seam is met with
over three inches ; there are yet comparatively few layers of
the rock that are wholly free from vegetable remains, and the
substance of these remains, however thin the leaf or small
the fragment, being generally converted into coal, the mineral,
from the multitude of grains of it disseminated through great
thicknesses of the strata, frequently gives a peculiar charac-
rer to the stone as one of its constituents. The same thing
is observable in other carboniferous localities, both in America
and Europe, and it appears quite reasonable to suppose, that
if coal seams were discovered of an older date than those
which constitute the present known great magazines of fossil
fuel, the vegetable growth that would be required to give
them an approach to a workable thickness, would afford
the means of an extensive distribution of remains in the strata
with which they were associated. The formations of Bay St.
Paul and Murray Bay however show no carbonized vegetable
remains whatever, and the only plants they presented at all, were
a very few obscure fucoids, the forms of which were replaced
by peroxyd of iron. The bitumen of the limestone may possibly
be derived from the soft tissues and gelatine of the marine animal
remains which have been buried in the deposit, and supporting
this opinion, indurated bitumen has been found in the interior of

24 ^

some of the fossil testacea, of the same limestone at Beauport ; ]
but the calcareous material of the harder part of such remains, j
so greatly predominates over the carbon of the softer, that coal '
seams could not be expected as the result of the mixture.

The specimens from Bay St. Paul have so thoroughly the i
aspect of such as might be derived from some of the coal fields i
of Great Britain that there remains upon my mind very little !
doubt of their vegetable origin. The mineral has a conchoidal i
fracture, a brilliant lustre and jet black color ; it has -a cleavage \
in two directions at right angles to the stratification, and to one |
another, dividing it into rectangijlar forms, and in some of the |
joints there are thin layers of quartz and of iron pyrites ; there |
is present als^o in the specimens, small patches and thin layers
of what in Phillip's System of Mineralogy is called mineral
charcoal, a substance which has a glimmering silky lustre, and
fibrous, wood-like texture ; it consists of charcoal with various
proportions of earth and iron, and its peculiar texture is supposed i
to be derived from its vegetable structure. There being no
lapidary in the city, I have not been able to submit thin trans-
lucent slices of the coal to microscopic observation, which in ,
addition to shewing vegetable structure, might possibly determine
vegetable species. If the species should be found to belong to
the true carboniferous era, there would then be little wanting to 1
trace out the probable history of the specimens. They are
fragmentary and angular, none of their corners being worn off
by attrition ; it is therefore probable, they have not travelled far •
by natural means. They are hard and firm, and shew marks of '
stratification, while the pyrites upon them is untarnished ; it i
therefore appears probable that they have not come from the out- j
crop, but from some deep part of a coal seam, and that they have |
not been exposed for any very great series of years. Where j
coal is kno\vn to exist, it is not usual to find it issuing forth in such j
fragments from springs, and here there are no carbonized fossil ]
plants disseminated through the rocks to give a hope of coal
seams, at the same time that the formation is well known to be '
of an age long anterior to any holding coal seams in any country !
in so far as the crust of the earth has yet been examined, and
certainly as much, or more than as much, older than the recog- h

nized carboniferous rocks of North America ; it is probable
therefore, that the specimens have not been derived from the
rocks of Bay St. Paul. If microscopic examination should
shew that the species of plants composing the fragments are of
the true carboniferous age, then the conclusion forced upon us
would be, that the specimens are derived from some imported
cargo, and if the notion is rejected that they reached the spring
by a forgotten accident, the probable supposition must be, that
they were placed there by design. The frequency of these
singular coal bearing springs in the vicinity, elsewhere so
unusual, and the scarcity of fine grains of the mineral in them,
rather tend to strengthen this suspicion. The number of the
springs attested by the respectable persons of Bay St. Paul,
whose certificate accomp^jiied J. Bouchard and A. Menard's
petition, is three, but I have been informed that another was
brought prominently forward some years ago, as afibrding the
same indications of coal, but that the late Mr. Andrew
Stuart of Quebec, and Captain Bayfield, had ascertained
beyond a doubt, that the spring had been packed by the
proprietor of the land with a view to enhancing the value of
his property. Possibly this person may have packed his
neighbors' springs at the same time, with a hope that, should
others make search in consequence of his pretended discovery,
their researches might disclose facts to confirm his own.

There being not the remotest doubt whatever of the geolo-
gical age of the limestone of Bay St. Paul, supposing the spe-
cimens were really derived from the strata, and that the species
of plants should at the same time be ascertained to be identical
with some of those of the carboniferous period, it would prove
that all evidence up to the present time has been imperfect, and
that the flora of this period is of hitherto unsuspected antiquity.
But even in such a case, or supposing the plants were difierent
in species from those of the true coal era, the paucity of vegetable
remains being such that scarcely a trace of them is found in so
great and so near a development of the strata as occurs at Cap
au Rets, the probability, amounting almost to certainty, would
be, that the specimens were derived from some local patch so

thin and circumscribed, as to be altogether worthless in an i
economic point of view. |

Titaniferous Iron Ore. — In the valley of the Gouffre, there j
occur very extensive masses of iron ore. One of these is met
with on the land of Mr. Charles Fortin, being the seventh or \
eighth lot from the south line of the concession of St. Urbain, and
about twenty-two acres below the church. The ore occupies a !
position removed about forty acres to the west of the road, on
the top of the hill flanking the valley ; it is but feebly magnetic,
has a black colour, gives a black streak, and shews a granular |
structure. The average breadth of the mass is about ninety i
feet from east to west, and in a north and south direction it \
is exposed for upwards of 340 feet. Mr. Fortin informed me I
that it had been traced five to six aicres, but our researches did
not enable us to detect evidences of its continuance beyond the i
distance stated. The rock on each side of the ore was syenitic \
gneiss, the run of which coincided with that of the ore, though
it did not appear to coincide with the general strike of the
formation through the country, probably from the influence of i
some great undulation or dislocation. According to the analysis |
of Mr. Hunt, the ore is mineralogically an ilmenite, containing j
so large a proportion of oxyd of titanium, as to reduce its produce j
in metallic iron to 36|^ per cent ; its speciflc gravity is 4.6, so |
that a cubic fathom would yield about sixteen tons of the pure '
metal. j

As already stated in respect to some of the iron ores oi the j
Eastern Townships, before any attempt is made to apply such i
an ore to practical purposes, it would be prudent to institute !
experiments to ascertain whether the large amount of titanium
it possesses may not render it unavailable, or require the use of
peculiar fluxes to effect its proper reduction. But the results
derived from the specimens brought from the locality were so j
unexpected on the spot, that the specmiens were all taken from
one part of the mass, and it will be but a proper precaution to
try samples from other parts, before concluding that the whole
may have a uniform character.

After I had quitted the Valley, Dr. LaTerrière, to whom I am i
indebted for much kindness and attention, informed me that on |

the same side of the Gouffre, but some miles lower down, another
mass of iron ore, equalling if not surpassing the previous one in
the area exposed, is to be met with. If the rock in which it is
enclosed runs in the same direction as that on Mr. Fortin's lot, it
would probably be found that the two exposures are parts of
the same bed, and other exposures may be discovered between
them.

On the left side of the Gouffre and in the bed of the stream,
about a mile lower down than the church, several large lumps
of ore, the largest of which measures six feet by nine, are
enclosed in the gneissoid rock ; they are all comprehended in a
distance of twenty-five yards, in a direction N. E. and S. W.,
and the strike of the rock appears to coincide with the run of
the nodules, which may perhaps have a farther continuance in
the wood in the same direction. The ore in this instance,
though having the color and streak of the magnetic oxyd, is
not at all magnetic, and holds a large proportion of titanium.

Galena. — The traces of lead ore already mentioned as met
with in the phosphato-calcareous veins near the mill in Bay St.
Paul, are scarcely worthy of farther allusion, except for the
purpose of remarking, that as the dislocations giving origin to
them, intersect the Trenton limestone and its conformable forma-
tions beneath, as well as the metamorphic series supporting-
them, it will be proper to search for the mineral in all veins of
calcareous spar that may intersect any of -them.

Phosphate of Lime. — As already stated, the phosphate was
met with in association with carbonate of lime, in veins ranging
in width from three inches to three feet, both in Bay St. Paul
and Murray Bay. No sample has yet been assayed, but judging
by the eye, the phosphate, which is pretty equally distributed
through the rock, may make up about seven per cent, of it.*
In previous reports it 'has been mentioned, that the mineral

* The phosphate of lime of this locality was found on a qualitative examination
by Mr. Hunt, to contain a large portion of fluorine, doubtless combined as a fluorid
of calcium ; traces of this element are very commonly present in the native
phosphate, but the quanUty in this case seems to be unusually large, and renders ft
cfuantikative analysis of the mineral desirable.

occurs in disseminated hexagonal crystals in the limestones of
the metamorphic rocks of the Ottawa ; it lies in amorphous
masses in the veins of Bay St. Paul, and though the per centage
of these A^eins may be too low to render them profitably work-
able even if they were wider, the existence of veins in
which the mineral is present, gives the hope that other analogous
localities mayl)e found in which a higher per centage may
render the rock more available. Bones, so ser^-iceable as a
manure, contain something over fifty per cent, of phosphate of
lime, and it would be as a substitute for them, that the mineral
phosphate would be used. There is an annual importation of
of bones into the United Kingdom for agricultural purposes,
chiefly from South America, which in 1844, equalled in value
£300,000, and may now amount to £400,00^0.

Building Stone. — Many bands of the gneiss would yield
building stones of a handsome appearance and durable nature,
but the expense of dressing them, at present influences the
inhabitants in rejecting them as too costly in the erection of
churches and such other edifices as they construct of stone.
The best example observed was in a field, on a lot about six
acres below the bridge over the Rivière des Mares, and about
500 yards to the west of the road. The rock is fine grained
and consists of white feldspar and quartz, Avith a moderate
quantity of black mica. The gneissoid structure is obscure, and
the stone looks very Kke à true granite of a light gray or nearly
white color ; it splits into rectangular blocks.

The bituminous limestone though brittle is easily dressed, and
proves a serviceable material for building ; its color is either
black or dark gray when freshly fractured, but it changes to a
lead gray on the exterior by the action of the weather ; surfaces
dressed with the chisel have a gray color, from the effect of
tooling.

A handsome building stone is obtained from the calcifer-
ous sandstone ; examples of it occur in Murray Bay at Les
Ecorchis and at White Cape, but the best beds met with were on
the same side of the Bay as White Cape, on the face of the hill
overlooking the boat cove. They lie on the properties of Mr. J. B.
Du Berger, who kindly accompanied me to the quarries, and of Mr.

Thomas Chapreoii, where an alternation of more and less are-
naceous layers are mterstratified with a few braids capable of
yielding lime, and dip N. 35 E. mag. <14. The arenaceous
layers give the building stones, in which equal sized grains of
sand are uniformly distributed ; the color of the stone is in
general a very light gray, which changes but little by the action
of the atmosphere, assuming however under its influence, a very
slight yellowish tinge ; the beds are evenly disposed, and vary
in thickness from one to sixteen inches, a very usual thickness
being eight inches ; they are capable of division in the planes of
two sets of parallel joints vertical to the stratification, but not
quite at right angles to one another ; but as the stone dresses
very easily, the blocks can with facility be rendered rectangular.
The church in Murray Bay is built of the stone, so also is the
presbytery and Mr. Du Berger's house. Multitudes of chimneys
and foundations of houses have been constructed of it, and it is
used for chimney pieces, lintels and window sills.

Flag Stones, — Some of the thinnest beds of the calciferous
sandstone of Mr. Du Bepger's quarry would yield very good
flag stones, but though of a better color they would not be so
durable as those which might be raised from the slightly mica-
ceous hornblende slate near Les Ecorchis. No experiment has
been tried upon these beds, but they appear capable of splitting
into slabs of all thicknesses down to an inch ; there would be
some difficulty in dressing the edges, but slabs of probably three
feet square might be got out, and the stone being very tough and
strong, with a thickness of one and a half or two inches it would
make excellent pavements ; the color is very dark gray or nearly
black.

Mill Stones. — I was informed by Dr. LaTerrière, that one or
two of the beds of the calciferous sandstone at White Cape
yield serviceable mill stones ; he himself has used the material
for an upper stone in his mill, and according to his opinion it
grinds wheat and other grains better than any of the gneiss-
oid rocks of the vicinity that have been tried. He uses
French burr stones also, and he finds that while these require
dressing but once a fortnight, the sandstone requires it weekly.

Limestone. — The bituminous limestone formation in all its
localities in the district under description, yields a vast amount
of excellent material for burning into quick-lime. The bitumen
it holds being of a combustible nature, cheapens and assists its
perfect calcination, and the lime it yields is pure and white.
Some of the comforts arising from an abundant supply of the
material with good building stone, are visible in the neatly
white- washed cottages of the peasantry, and the solid well-built
chimneys that pierce the roofs and give strength to the
dwellings ; these chimneys contrast well with the rickety clay-
built stacks or substituted stove-pipes, prevailing in such newly
cleared parts as are far removed from good calcareous rock.
Bay St. Paul and Murray Bay furnish annually, a good many
small cargoes of limestone and of lime to the south .«ide of the
St. Lawrence for a considerable stretch along the coast, where
limestone beds are scantily supplied to the strata, and those that
exist are of inferior quality.

Mineral Springs. — In both the valleys as well as on the coast
between them there are many mineral springs, the whole of
which appear to be sulphurous, and some of them of considerable
strength. Until an examination of their qualities is made, it will
be sufficient to give a list of their localities : they all issue
from the bituminous limestone through clay :

1. There is said to be a sulphyrous spring near the mill, on the west side of
Bay St. Paul, but not having become aware of its existence until the day
after I had passed the spot in the course of examination, it was not visited.

2. On the land of Mr. Thomas Potvin on the east side of the Gouffre, about
twenty-five acres above the church and three east of the road, there is a
spring giving a considerable supply of water both winter and summer ; it
leaves a copious white deposit on the grass around the margin of the little
pool at its issue, and on the sides and bottom of the rivulet that runs from
it. A sulphurous odor can be perceived at all times on approaching the
spring, and it is said to be sufficiently powerful when the weather threatens
rain to reach the house, which is only a few yards from the road.

3. On the property of Mr. Tremblay near Cap au Rets, there is a sulphurous
spring giving a copious supply of water; the grass along the channel in
which it flows is whitened with a deposit from it.

4. About half a mile above the Pointe aux Eboulis there is a copious sulphur-
ous spring, giving a white deposit like the previous one.

5. Another is met with close above the same point, being about half a mile
below the previous one, and there are others between the two.

6. About half a mile above the bridge on Murray Bay River, there is said to
be a sulphurous spring; at the time of my visit it was covered by the water
of the river, and could not be seen.

7. About twenty acres still farther up, on the west side of the river, there is
another sulphurous spring on the land of Ambrose Gagnon ; it yields a
large quantity of water, which is discharged from a box placed about it,
from a hole of two inches in diameter, with a head of three inches ; it
smells strongly of sulphureted hydrogen, and whitens with an encrusting
deposit, the spout and channel through which it flows-

8. Another of these springs is said to exist on the east side of the Bay, on the
land of Vitard Goudreau, back from Les Ecorchis.

SOUTH SIDE OF THE ST. LAWRENCE.
Lower Silurian Rocks.
The country on the south side of the St. Lawrence, between
the Chaudière and the Temiscouata road is inferior in general
agricultural character, to that between the Chaudière and the
Richelieu ; it does not present the same breadth of champaign
margin, and in that which may be called flat, there is a larger ex-
posure of rock, giving it a more rugged aspect. The mountainous
belt described in a previous report as occupying a breadth of
thirty to thirty-five miles in the district above the Chaudière,
gradually approaching the St. Lawrence, comes upon it below,
and flanked by it from the vicinity of St. Thomas downwards,
this belt, with about the breadth stated, may be considered to
occupy the whole of the surface to the Provincial boundary line,
in that part of the line which runs parallel with the river.
The strata in by far the greater part of the exposures, exhibit a
parallelism in their strike with the direction of the mountain
belt, and therefore come upon the river at a small angle to the
general trend of its south side ; the true general strike however
is with the river, and particularly with the north side, the appa-
rent divergence on the south being due to the effect of a multitude
of anticlinal axes, over which in succession the strata bend in
very sharp plications, often leaning over to the north-west,
giving the semblance of a nearly constant dip to the south-east,
at high angles. These folds are so numerous, and frequently
repeat the measures several times in so short a distance, as to

destroy confidence in every endeavor to estimate the thickness
of the different divisions of deposit, and the want of a know-
ledge of the true thickness, on the other hand, renders it uncertain
in any particular case under examination, whether all the folds
affecting a set of strata, have been correctly ascertained. The
main undulations can often be followed for considerable distances
by means of the geographical distribution of contorted masses of
the subdivisions, but unless a connection or relation with regard to
each other, is followed out among these undulations, it is some-
what difficult to determine whether a form that may be subject
to consideration is anticlinal or synclinal.

In ascending sequence from the Trenton limestone and Utica
slate, the masses of rock which are met with are in their general
characteristics as follows : —

1. A series of dark-gray clay slates, interstratified with gray,
thin bedded sandstones, often calcareous, and weathering yellow-
ish brown, and with gray yellow weathering limestones. This
series is fossilferous and holds shells and graptolites, and appears
to be terminated by a set of bituminous shales and black lime-
stones.

2. A series of gray, green and occasionally red shales succeed
with thin calcareous layers, and it is not quite certain whether
a considerable deposit of red shales, in addition to those associated
with the gray, does not occasionally lie at the top of the series.
These shales appear occasionally to hold bands of calcareous
conglomerate, cracks in which are filled with indurated bitumin-
ous material.

3. A deposit of hard sandstones, varying in color from light
gray to iron gray, and sometimes slightly greenish ; they
appear to hold but little mica ; they seem to be sometimes fine-
grained and thin, but close-bedded, and sometimes coarse and
massive, being occasionally observed to pass into beds of a
conglomerate character either wholly or in part ; the pebbles of
these conglomerates are frequently composed of gray limestone,
containing organic remains of the Trenton formation, and in
many places they appear to constitute beds so abundantly stored
with calcareous material as to be burnt for lime. Thin bedded
gray limestones arc occasionally met wfth near the calcareous

conglomerates, and are supposed to belong to this division of i
deposits, and it is not improbable that the whitish limestone of
Upton, Acton and Wickham mentioned in a previous Report, |
may exhibit a still more compact form of the same portion of i
the deposit.

4. Red and green shales follow^ the gray sandstones and their \
calcareous conglomerates ; the red color is of a chocolate cast and
the iron to v^hich it is probably due, appears very frequently to be
associated with titanum ; the red is generally striped with green» i
and the green in some exposures predominates over the red ; the I
red and green shales appear frequently to be interstratified with i
bands of hard, light-^ray, fine-grained sandstone, which is very
frequently calcareous. i

5. Succeeding the red and green shales, and interstratified j
with some of the same character, there occurs a series of coarse- i
grained green sandstones, which hold more mica than the lower
sandstones, and frequently present small spangles of plumbago ; !
they appear to derive their prevailing color from chlorite, but |
red layei's as coarse as the green and holding nearly as much i
chlorite, are in some parts interstratified ; the beds of both colors i
which are almost always massive, are in general calcareous I
and often present bands of coarse conglomerate, with quartz
pebbles, which sometimes appear to become mingled with pebbles
and even boulders of gray limestone holding fossils, probably of
the Trenton formation.

These five divisions of deposits occupy all the champaign
country east of the Richelieu, between the mountain belt and ]
the St. Lawrence, with the exception of the localities stated in
a previous report, displaying the Trenton limestone and Utica i
slate, in a line between Phillipsburg and the Grondines ; and in !
a more or less metamorphic condition they appear to constitute
the mountain belt also, the inferior bituminous shales becoming i
plumbaginous slates, the gray sandstones being probably con-
verted into quartz rock and talcose quartz slates, and in relation
to this silicious zone, there appear to be in the metamorphic
district, two magnesian belts shewing dolomite and serpentine, !
the equivalents of which in the unaltered rocks require farther
investigation; the red slates and green sandstones seem to

£ i

become chloritic, epidotic and ferriferous slates, and less schistose
forms of rock, and from the geographical position of what have
been called the corneous rocks, it appears not improbable they
may be referable to this part of the deposit; but a larger
number of facts must be ascertained before the various divisions
of the metamorphic rocks can be clearly traced to their un-
changed equivalents. The Mrhole belong to the Low^er Silurian
age, and they are followed by others which are shown by the
fossils held in some parts to be Upper Silurian.

It is by the geographical distribution chiefly of the five enu-
merated divisions of deposit that the main anticlinal forms can
be traced out, and the marked color of the red shales or slates is
of great value in the investigation, when the dark gray and
black shales come from beneath them. In the absence however
of these dark colored lower rocks, the differences between the
gray and green sandstones and their equivalents constitute a less
certain means of distinction. Between the Temiscouata road
and the Chaudière, with the exception of one locality where
graptolitic shales occur opposite the upper end of the Island of
Orleans, no clearly recognizeable mass of the first or lowest
division was met with ; the whole country north-west of the
Upper Silurian boundary hereafter to be described, appearing, as
far as the investigation has been carried, to consist of the
remaining four divisions ; but above the Chaudière as far as a
line between Phillipsburgh and Montreal, as shewn in the
Report already made on the rocks of the Eastern Townships,
nearly one half of the district rests upon the first division.

In that Report, the positions of several anticlinals were indicated,
and some of them have been farther traced both above and
below the Chaudière. Three were surmised in the lower shales
from the recurring presence of the fossiliferous part of them
on the Rivers Richelieu, des Hurons and Yamaska, and the
existence of the last is supported by the distribution of red shales
on the Rivers St. Francis, Nicolet and Bécancour. On the first
of these, they occur about three and a half miles above the
Indian village near its mouth, and occupying a breadth of a mile,
are followed by dark gray fossiliferous shales beyond ; on the
Nicolet, red shales are seen about seven miles above the village

of that name, occupying a breadth of upwards of three miles
more ; on the Bécancour they occur about seven miles up from
the mouth, and at intervals for about five miles more. The
exposures on these two latter streams are supposed to belong to
one trough, and the Yamaska anticlinal would run between it
and the previous exposure, on a line from the elbow in the river
at the junction of the Chibouet to the mouth of the Bécancour
The red pôrtion of the trough, connected with these exposures
on the Bécancour and Nicolet, probably terminates before reach-
ing the St. Francis, as no corresponding exposure was observed
on this stream, which is occupied by the strata of the first
division for a distance of fifteen miles as far as the trap occa-
sioning the fall at Drummondville ; but about a mile and a half
above this village, a display of green sandstones and red shales
is met with. There are corresponding exposures on the Nicolet
and Bécancour, on the twelfth range of Ashton and the tenth
range of Maddington ; but on the Nicolet just above Douglass-
ville, there occur exposures of red strata on the ninth and tenth
ranges of Ashton, which red strata do not reach the St. Francis on
one side nor the Bécancour on the other, while lower shales come
out on the eleventh range of Ashton. These lower shales indicate a
not very important anticlinal ; but the axis of elevation existing
between Douglassville and the red exposures lower down the
stream would correspond with that which brings up the Trenton
limestone in the vicinity of St. Dominique ; in consequence of a
transverse depression however on the crown of the arch, the
limestone which is met with again at the Grondines, appears to
be covered up in the interval by the shales of the first division,
the fossils of which are met with in a continuous line on all the
three rivers. The Utica slates, and above them these shales
with their fossils, come out on the St. Lawrence, south-east of
the Trenton limestone of the Grondines at Pointe du Platon and
St. Croix, and the shales are exposed at intervals on the bank
of the river to within half a mile of St. Nicolas, the green
sandstones with their red and green shales being greatly
displayed at and below the village, where in successive ridges
and valleys they occupy a transverse breadth of one third of a mile.

The green sandstones and red slates above Drummondville
present a narrow exposure of about half a mile ; they belong
to the fifth division of deposites, and probably mark the position
of a synclinal axis ; proceeding from them, along the south east
side of the general trough to v^^hich they belong, red shales,
green and sometimes gray sandstones are met v^ith in a nearly
straight line, on the two Nicolets in Horton, on the Stanfold road
in the ninth range of the Township, on the fourteenth* lot of the
eighth range of Somerset, and on the Bécancour in the north
corner of Inverness, bounded by the strata of the first division
all the way ; and while between this line and the north rim of
the trough to St. Nicolas, no rocks but such as might be referred
to the second, third, fourth and fifth divisions, have been met
with on three transverse lines of section, as far as the St. Croix
road, no strata but such as are referable to the first division,
have been found on the banks of the St. Francis, to the sixth lot
of Kingsey, a distance of about fourteen miles, in a straight
line. As stated in the previous Report on the Eastern Town-
ships, this transverse span of the first division comprehends a
very important anticlinal, traceable from the Province Line in
St. Armand, to which it appears probable that two more, instead
of one as there mentioned, are subordinate, the main one being
still further traceable to the north corner of Inverness. It ap-
pears probable that this axis crosses the Chaudière between two
exposures of red rocks two and a half miles apart, at a spot
about fourteen miles in a straight line from its mouth, and the
Etchemin, about two miles higher up than the bend above St.
Henry, where it attains one of the tributary branches and part
of the main continuous stem of the Rivière du Sud, following
this to its mouth ; on the south-east side of these latter streams, light
gray quartz rock occasionally shewing a band of calcareous
conglomerate runs all the way from St. Gervais to St. Pierre,
while gray slightly calcareous sandstones are seen near St.
Charles, on the north-west, with rocks of the fourth and fifth
divisions on each side, further removed from the axis. From the
Province Line in St. Armand to St. Thomas, the distance is about
one hundred and eighty miles.

A section of the metamorphic rocks, which occur on the St.
Francis, between the anticlinal axis just described and Mel-
bourne Village, consisting of reddish, green and gray talcose
clay slates, dolomites, quartz rock, chloritic and epidotic rock,
and dark gray and black plumbaginous slates and limestones,
has already been given in the Report for 1847-8, and it has
there been stated that in these dark-colored slates and lime-
stones, (which belong to the first division of deposits,) there
runs an anticlinal from Sutton to Tingwick, to which two more
are subordinate, and an additional one is found to be subsidiary
to the Kingsey and Shipton trough. On the south-east side of
the Melbourne and Shipton anticlinal there occur green talcose
slates, gray sandstones, serpentines and corneous quartz rock,
with partially epidotic and chloritic conglomerate and red jaspery
slates ; but it has been found very difficult to follow the anti-
clinal further eastward than Tingwick. Traces of it however
are supposed to be met with across to the north corner of Ham,
after intersecting the Nicolet at the south corner of Chester
its course across Wolfestown and Ireland is very doubtful, but it
seems probable that it comes out upon the Chaudière, some dis-
tance below St. Joseph's Church. Dark colored clay slates and
limestones cross the Township of Broughton, from the fourth
range of Thetford, and come upon the Chaudière near the extre-
mity of the Broughton Road, and to the south-east of these,
removed about a mile to a mile and a half, serpentine, soapstone
and dolomite are exposed at intervals in a nearly parallel course ;
but their relations are not yet satisfactorily made out, and it is
not certain whether the serpentine belongs to the upper or lower
magnesian belt.

In Ireland and Coleraine there is a great display of serpen-
tine— the largest that has yet been met with ; it lies on both
sides of Black Lake, extending four miles to the south-west in
the former, constituting Caribou Hill, and probably two miles
to the north-east in the latter Township, with a breadth of about
two miles and a half, thus spreading over an area of fifteen
square miles. This mass must lie on the south-east side of the
anticlinal axis, and there is not much doubt it is a continuation
of that observed a previous season on the south-east side of

Wolfestown, which is traceable to the lower end of Nicolet Lake,
and has since been met with on the south-west side line of Ham
between the fourth and fifth ra,nges, in a direct line for the dial-
lage of Richmond Lake in the south corner of Tingwick, and
the Shipton serpentine beyond. There is another exposure of
serpentine in Ireland, on the twenty-first lot of the first and
second ranges, about a mile from a portion of the previous one, and
as no rock was observed between them, it is not certain whether
it may not be a direct extension of it. A very talcose slate, asso-
ciated with soapstone, occurs on the tenth lot of the third range,
and a band of dolomite in the general strike of the stratification
on the twelfth lot of the fifth range, between which two expo-
sures and the previous one, it is probable the axis of the anti-
clinal may occur.

On the south-east side of the serpentine of Caribou Hill there
is a broad zone of corneous quartz, which accompanies it through
Garthby, Ham and Wotton, composing Ham Mountain in its
course ; associated occasionally with epidotic rocks, it is traceable
in an opposite direction across Coleraine, Thetford and Broughton,
rising into the White Mountain in the first and into Broughton
Mountain in the last Township, and on the south-east side of the
zone there is another band of serpentine. This serpentine is highly
calcareous in Wotton, Ham and the south-west side of Garthby,
but acquires a purer character on the north-east side of this
Township, as well as across Coleraine, where it approaches to
within* half a mile of Lake St. Francis, proceeding in such a
direction towards Adstock and Tring as would carry it to a junc-
tion with the serpentine of the Bras and the Guillaume in the
Seignory of Vaudreuil Beauce, where it has corneous quartz rock
on the south side of it, and a six feet bed of it about the middle.
The corneous rock on the Chaudière in some places holds a large
amount of diallage and in others hornblende, feldspar and mica,
and for a short distance on both sides of the river it assumes the
character of a perfect and very tough granite, passing some-
times into a syenite. Between the serpentine where it crosses
the Chaudière and attains the Guillaume and the anticlinal of St.
Joseph, exposures of red slate and red and green sandstone are
frequent for a breadth of between four and five miles ; they have

been traced to the north-eastward across Cranbourne into Sandon,
a distance of twenty miles, and to the south-west about three miles
and a half. In many parts of the area the exposures holding
much epidote, still maintain a general red color, but accompanying
the red there are also largo masses of epidotic rock of a general
decided green tinge. On the right bank of the Chaudière pro-
ceeding north-westward across the measures from the serpentine,
after a concealed interval of a quarter of a mile, a very considerable
breadth (nearly half a mile,) of north-westward dipping massive
green sandstone, often of a conglomerate character, becoming
interstratified with red slate, is terminated by a red sandstone
bed of twenty-five feet, followed by a five feet band of highly
crystalline red limestone with patches of red slate, to which
succeeds a rock of a singular aspect, which might be readily
taken for trap ; seen from a distance it has a general gray color
on the exterior, but internally it is red bordering on purple, and is
composed of a vast collection of large kidney shaped or flattened
subspheroidal forms, standing on edge in the direction of the
strike ; they are aggregated in such a manner as to interlock
among one another irregularly, the intervals among them being
filled by a mixture of blackish green serpentine, dark leek green
chlorite, pistachio green epidote, opaque white calcspar, and occa-
sional colorless translucent quartz ; the latter four minerals are in
a higlily crystalline condition and the epidote frequently surrounds
the nodules of calespar. The rognons are of a jaspery texture
and are sometimes minutely spotted with round and angular
forms of a green mineral with the hardness of serpentine, which
gives to them the semblance of pebbles and boulders of porphyry ;
in the centre of some of them there are lenticular shapes of white
calcspar, and when fractured sub-spheres have been acted on by
the weather they assume a circumvallation of colors conforming
with the exterior, towards which the colors become of a lighter
and grayer hué, the whole however being enclosed in a thin band
of deeper red which fades into the surrounding matrix ; there is
also a distinct tendency in the nodules to divide into concentric
shells in the direction of the colors. The ophitic matrix in which
the reniform masses are imbedded is ia some parts of a slaty
structure and is studded with thin fragments of a slaty character,

presenting the aspect of a slate conglomerate, and this conglom-
erate, which in other instances holds small hard pebble forms of
a brownish red jasper spotted with green, runs in bed-like bands
in the strike, and on the exterior weathers into small pits and
shews different colors, giving the rock a carious and variegated
appearance. A multitude of cracks sometimes figure the face
of the large rognons in section, and on each side of these cracks,
where the surface is worn smooth at the mill and fall on the
Rivière des Plantes, there rises a thin small ledge of a darker
color than the rest; some of the rognons become epidotic
towards the exterior, and epidote runs in various cracks and
irregular bands through the rock. This singular mass has a
breadth of nearly three hundred yards (including a part towards
the middle which approaches the character of a red slate), and
in its structure and minerals though not in color, it very much
resembles a green rock heretofore described as met with near
the eastern band of serpentine in Bolton, in the valley of the
Missisquoi River. The general bearing of this red and green
epidotic and ophitic rock is with that of the strata, to the north-
east ; it has been traced up the valley of the Rivière des Plantes
for a short distance, and about three miles in continuation on
the road to Cranbourne, where it appears to be wholly green, and
though it retains its reniform structure it was not observed to be
ophitic ; but red and green epidotic rock without reniform masses
and without serpentine occurs at different parts of the area
that has been already mentioned. On the line between Cran-
bourne and Sandon it occurs with a transverse measure of about
four miles from the River Etchemin to the line between Cran-
bourne and Frampton.

The Sutton, Shipton and St. Joseph anticlinal is probably the
main axis of elevation of the Green Mountains in Canada ; where
it crosses the St. Francis its distance from that of Kingsey and
St. Thomas may be considered to be about ten miles, but between
them on the Chaudière it must be much more, and it is probable
that some of those between the two may on reaching the Chau-
dière have increased in importance. In the vicinity of this river
there are evidences of the existence of these intermediate anti-
cinals, but it has not yet been found practicable to connect

them with those on the St. Francis, though the general strike of
the stratification in the interval has been pretty well determined
by a band of dolomite occasionally passing into serpentine, which
has been traced from the thirteenth lot on the line between
Chester and Halifax, to the St. Margaret range in the south-east
part of the Seignory of St. Giles, a distance of thirty-five miles.
Chloritic and epidotic rocks much resembling those of Shipton,
occur on the north-west side of the band nearly all the way.
Where the band crosses the Chaudière is not quite certain, but
on the east side of the river dolomite is met with in the Seignory
of St. Joseph close upon the line of St. Mary, in two localities
that would not be far removed from its course. Between this
band and the Kingsey and St. Thomas anticlinal, there are many
parallel exposures of conglomerate limestone beds associated
with red and green slate. From St. Sylvester Church in St.
Giles Seignory, which is four miles across the measures from the
dolomite, there occur in a transverse breadth of five miles more
to the - forks of the Beaurivage River, four bands of this conglom-
erate which are probably repetitions of one bed. That at the
Forks of the Beaurivage, which is burnt for lime, consists of

Feet.

Sandstone 3

Limestone conglomerate, holding silicious and calcareous pebbles, the
latter being very numerous ; the matrix is a very arenaceous lime-
stone 6

Sandstone 3

Limestone conglomerate, as before ; the limestone pebbles and thé
matrix weather brown, particularly the matrix, which holds more
sand than the pebbles ; internally both the matrix and calcareous
pebbles are gray, the pebbles the darker of the two 18

Total thickness 3o

The next exposure occurs about two miles to the south-east,
on the second lot of the Chute settlement, occupied by Samuel
Orr ; in one part it shews a conglomerate character, very similar
to that of the previous exposure, for a breadth of twenty yards,
with a dip 183° mag. <53°, which would give a thickness of about
forty feet ; but pursuing it on the strike to the east side of the first
lot, about an acre further on, its dip becomes 108° niag. <58°,

and the rock changes its conglomerate character to that
of a coarse arenaceous limestone, shewing transparent and
translucent grains of quartz ; a thickness of twenty feet of this
is seen in a vertical escarpment. The third exposure occurs
on the Craig Road, about a mile north of the west branch of the
Beaurivage River ; its strike would carry it about a mile south-
east of the previous band, and the following is a horizontal sec-
tion of the measures exposed near the band, proceeding from
north-west to south-east : —

' Yards.

Quartzose conglomerate, holding small quartz pebbles chiefly, in a

calcareo-arenaceous matrix ... 3^

Calcareous conglomerate, holding gray limestone pebbles chiefly, with
sorne of quartz in a calcareo-arenaceous matrix; the matrix weathers
brown, but the limestone pebbles, under the influence of the atmos-
phere, remain gray on the exterior; they vary in size from half an
inch to eight and ten inches in diameter, the majority being one
and two inches; several of them hold fossils, encrinites being plainly
discernible ,. I

Quartzose conglomerate, as before; the proportions of calcareous and
quartzose parts in the whole band composed of this and the two pre-
vious beds vary very much in the course of 400 yards on the strike 4

Measures concealed ; in this part there is probably an anticlinal axis ;
the dip of the preceding band is 335*, mag. <35'' ; that of the suc-

ceeding portion of the section is 135®, mag. <45® 50

Conglomerate, partially calcareous, as before 5

Measures concealed 6

Gray fine grained sandstone, weathering white 11

Measures concealed, probably sandstone 11

Gray fine grained sandstone, only partially displayed 18

Measures concealed 15

Green smooth surfaced slates 15

Red and green slates &

Measures concealed 19

Red slates 23

The St. Sylvester exposure also is associated with fine grained
sandstones and red slates, and can be followed from the Church
along the road to St. Mary Seignory, to the turn which com-
mences about a mile forward, where it appears to leave the
road, keeping on in a straight line ; a band, in the course
it maintains, is met with on the road between the St, Martin

and St. John ranges of St. Giles Seignory, at the distance
of about two miles from the St. Mary road, between which
spot and this road two more bands* are seen, all in the
breadth of a mile, being probably repetitions through the effect
of undulations ; the most south-eastern of these appears to main-
tain a course about a mile on the north-west of the St. Mary
road and nearly pai-allel with it, three exposures occurring
about two miles apart from one another, and the last a little
over a mile from the left bank of the Chaudière River, at about
the same distance below St. Mary Church. This is the highest
point on the Chaudière at which the calcareous conglomerates
have been met with ; four miles further down they occur in the
bend at which the Quebec road leaves the river, and again in a
probable continuation of the same band about a mile and a half
lower, a little above the extremity of the road from St. Bernard
Church ; two miles beyond this there is a great exposure of
coarse grained limestone, shewing no conglomerate, but probably
referable to the same stratigraphical position ; about a mile and
a half below this there is an exposure of coarse arenaceous
limestone, a little before reaching which a display of amyg-
daloidal trap occurs, and in less than the same distance farther,
three bands of calcareous conglomerate are met with before
reaching the position of the St. Thomas anticlinal. On the
Etchemin an exposure occurs about half a mile below St. Clair
Church, another about four miles farther down, where the
band shews no conglomerate, and a third about four miles
still farther, where the rock is a conglomerate, and probably
corresponds with the lowest exhibition just mentioned on the
Chaudière. Red rocks occur in the vicinity of most of the expos-
ures of conglomerate on both the rivers, and extend in breadth
on both about two miles beyond them, farther up. A corres-
ponding width of the same has been seen on the road running
south-east from St. Gervais Church, and extending eight miles
to the boundary of Buckland Township. On this road the expo-
sures of red and green rock, for two miles and a half, bear a
similar epidotic and chloritic character to those in Cranbourne
and St. Joseph, the first exposure occurring about a mile from
the Church, where a band of a very trappean aspect is met with,

of an apparently amygdaloidal character from the presence of
nodules of calcareous spar. No reniform masses were observed
to mark its structure, but a portion of the band appeared to be a
conglomerate with a calcareo-arenaceous matrix, enclosing hard
jaspery fragments, and beds of red sandstone and red slate were
in association with it ; a red and green rock of an epidotic quality
was observed also on the road between the St. Mary and St. Su-
sanne ranges in the Seignory of JoUiet.

Towards the corresponding limits of these two areas thus
characterised by red and green rocks, serpentine and dolomite
appear on the one side and dolomite on the other, and not far
from these magnesian bands in both, cracks in the contortions of
the strata, are filled with quartz and calcspar, and marked by talc,
chlorite and vitreous copper ore. Between these two red marked
areas the country rises into a ridge on both sides of the Chau-
dière, displaying a great amount of gray sandstone and quartz
rock, with talcose quartz slate, unassociated with any observed
red strata. The breadth of this tract is about eight miles, and
crosses Frampton Township into Buckland, monopolizing nearly
the whole of both.

The road to the south of St. Pierre Church near St. Thomas,
has been examined for a distance of about six and a half miles,
and after passing the quartz rock, which has been already men- .
tioned as occupying about a mile and a half, the remainder of
the distance reaching about a mile into Armagh Township, is
occupied by red and green slates and sandstones.

At rislet the immediate coast is occupied by the green sand-
stones of the fifth division of deposits, displaying interstratified
bands of calcareous conglomerate, and to the south-east recur-
ring exposures of sandstone of the same color, with red slates
frequently filling the intervals, are displayed beyond the rear of
the third range, a distance of between three and four miles.
About two miles farther, light gray and white granular quartz
rock rises into a considerable ridge, and occupies a breadth of
about two and a half miles, in the Seignories of I'lslet and Lessard,
beyond which the coarse green sandstones of the fifth division
are again met with, and they appear to continue for between
six and seven miles farther, which is as far as the bush road to

the Black River was examined. Sandstones alone were seen in
place on the road and their color was always green, but large
loose angular blocks of a red color were frequent and smaller
fragments of red slate occasional. Similar rocks of both colors
were met with in place on the Black River, which was ascended
from the valley of the St. John, about two miles within the Pro-
vince line, where the strike would bring them to a position about
fourteen miles to the south-east of those seen on the road. None
of them were in such a highly metamorphic condition as those
in Buckland.

The quartz rock ridge of I'lslet and Lessard appears to consti-
tute an anticlinal axis, and approaching nearer to the coast be-
hind St. Anne and the mouth of the River Quelle, to come out upon
it between Kamouraska and St. Andrew. In this vicinity there
are several considerable hills which run parallel with one
another, and appear to be composed of the granular quartz rock.
Just below Kamouraska the exposures are comprised within the
breadth of about two miles and a half, but they are narrower
at St. Andrew, near which, at a place designated from the dis-
play of abrupt rocky eminences, by the name of Les Caps, the
width is less by a mile and a half ; here the sides and summits
of three hills appear to be cased over in succession by the same
aggregation of granular quartz rock beds, the thickness of which,
as displayed in one locality, appears to be about two hundred feet ;
the hills constitute three folds in the stratification, and a fourth
one less prominently shewn is found a little farther from the
coast. At the Grande Ance, six miles farther down the St. Law-
rence, the exposures are straitened to half a mile, and the last
observed traces of the quartz rock, as indicating the course of
the anticlinal to which the folds are subordinate, were seen on
the Rivière du Loup, below the fall of Caldwell's Mill, where they
probably do not occupy half the breadth. In the Village of
Rivière du Loup greenish sandstones are displayed, and they are
traceable along the coast from the outside point of I'Ance Creuse
beyond St. Patrick Church. These sandstones appear to be
repeated in an abrupt rocky eminence called the Pilot, rising
out of the flat land north east of the small bay at the mouth of
the river; the thickness evident in this hill, where the dip is 135*

mag. <30'^ is 290 feet, but it is by no means certain that the
whole of the strata belonging to the band are exposed. The
transverse measure of the supposed equivalent band, as far
as seen on the right bank of the river at the mill, is about a
hmidred yards, with a dip of seventy degrees, giving about the
same thickness as before ; but a short distance removed from the
left bank, the breadth is nearly five hundred yards. It is uncer-
tain whether the whole thickness is exposed on the right, and
how many undulations may cause repetitions on the left. In the
Pilot Hill, many of the beds are of a conglomerate character,
holding quartz pebbles chiefly, among which are occasionally
mingled several of limestone, some of which are fossili ferons.
The strata of this hill and of the village are supposed to be re-
fereible to the fifth division of deposits, but no interstratification
of red slates was observed among them. Red slates however
Constitute Rivière du Loup Point, whose strata would run
to the north-west of Pilot Hill, and they are met with between
the village mill rocks and the quartz rock at the foot of Caid-
welFs Fall.

On the road between Rivière du Loup and Temiscouata Lake,
red and green slates, with an occasional interstratified thin bed
of limestone, are the only rocks seen between Caldwell's Mill
and the tenth road lot of the south-east-running double range, a
distance of five males ; but on the four succeeding lots granular
quartz again makes its appearance, very probably marking
another anticlinal axis, which would cross the Green River,
between the second and third ranges of Whltworth. Green
slates were seen four and a half miles farther on, and red slates
a mile beyond at the Green River, on the fourth and fifth road
lots of the east-running double range ; and the latter prevail for
upwards of a mile and a half to a small stream on the thirteenth
lot, about half a mile beyond which, on the eighteenth lot, a four
leet band of close grained sandstone, resembling the granular
quartz rock, is met with; though no great mass of such rock
was seen associated with it, it may indicate the vicinity of an
anticlinal. No exposure occurs for upwards of a mile to the
. River of Rocks, on the twenty-eighth lot ; but at the summit of
the hill which succeeds, massive coarse green chloritic sandstones

occur and constitute the whole mountain to the River St. Francis,
a tributary of the St. John, flowing through the forty-ihird lot
upwards of two miles on. Ascending the opposite hill, red slates
are again met with, and at the summit massive green and occa-
sionally red chloritic sandstones occur, which prevail to the valley
of the Little St. Francis, two miles from the previous stream, on
the fifty-fourth and fifty-fifth lots ; and after a concealed interval
of two miles more, red and green slates again occur on the sixty-
fourth and sixty-fifth lots, rising from the valley of the Grande
Fourche of the Trois Pistoles River, a tributary of the St. Law-
rence. For the next eight miles no red strata were observed,
and, with the exception of green chloritic sandstones on the sixty-
ninth lot, the exposures disclosed were hard gray sandstones
sometimes slightly talcose and thinly ribbed with black, green
slates, green and gray slates, gray slates with smooth glossy
surfaces, and gray slates interstratified occasionally with thin cal-
careo-arenaceous bands, the bands weathering to an ochre yellow.
These rocks, notwithstanding the absence of red strata, may
possibly be referable to the second and third divisions of depasit,
but the constant absence also of the calcareous conglomerates
which prevail on the coast, and are there so persistent on the
strike, with the approach to undoubted superior rocks on Temis-
couata Lake, render it necessary, without more exteixsive exami-
nation, that their geological place should remain for the present
in some degree uncertain. On the one hundred and thirteenth
lot and the next succeeding, which is the last in the road ranges,
red slates mixed with green and gray occur, and just at the
entrance upon the Temiscouata Seignorj' g^^J and greenish
sandstones follow, and become striped and interstratified with
red slates in such exposures as exist for half a mile to the thir-
tieth mile-post, sixty yards beyond which occurs the first stream
falling into Temiscouata Lake. In the next four miles the rocks
exposed are hard gray sandstones, sometimes exhibiting a riband-
like aspect from the presence of thin dark layers, striped green
and gray clay slates with hard quartz rock-like bands, gray clay
slates with wrinkled glossy surfaces, • gray harsh arenaceo-
argillaceous slates, with thin gray limestone bands weathering to
an ochre yellow earth, and occasionally black carbonaceous

slates; while at the end of the distance strong greenish sand-
stones, followed by red and green slates, again occur, beyond
which the two or three exposures in the remaining two and a
half miles to the lake display gray, black and green clay slates.
The strata occupying the four miles to the south-east of the
thirtieth mile-post bear so strong a lithological resemblance to
those of the nine miles to the north-west, that there is not much
doubt they are geologically equivalent, but until a greater
number of facts, shewing the geographical distribution of the
rocks connected with the section, has been ascertained, their
arrangement in the physical structure of the mountain range
cannot be pointed out with precision. But from what has been
stated, it would seem probable that the anticlinal of Rivière du
Loup, St. Andrew and Lessard, keeping parallel with that of
St. Thomas, will run into the southern part of Frampton, and
that of the second and third ranges of Whitworth, with a parallel
course, will attain the southern part of Buckland.

Notwithstanding that the anticlinals would thus appear in their
south-western course to enter the metamorphic region, no rocks
of the very highly altered condition which characterises those of
the Eastern Townships, in the south-eastern development of the
formation to which they belong, were met with on the Temis-
couata road section, nor does it seem probable that any will be
found on the line from I'lslet to the Black River ; but where the
metamorphic action begins to decrease between Buckland
and the Black River, has not yet been determined, as the season
did not permit us to ascend any of the tributaries of the St.
John River higher up than that stream. The investigation of
this question is not merely a matter of scientific interest, but one
of economic importance, as it is very probable that with the
decrease of metamorphic intensity will diminish that value of
the mountain range as a mineral region, which it is known to
possess in its whole extent from Canada to Mexico.

Upper Silurian Rocks.

A section across the Jlpper Silurian series of rocks, as displayed
in the Eastern Townships, was given in the Report on that
district already transmitted to the Government ; in this it was

stated, that between the Shipton Pinnacle ridge and the Stoke
Mountain range, both belonging to the lower series, there was a
wide valley extending from Memphremagog Lake to Ham
Mountain, which required farther examination. In the south-
western end of this sub-elliptical area, two narrow, nearly
parallel troughs of fossiliferous limestone, those of Potton Ferry
and Georgeville, underlaid by clay slates, were shewn to occur
with an anticlinal axis between them ; on an excursion since
made across the Stoke Mountains to the upper part of Windsor
River, a thir^ narrow, fossiliferous area has been met with on
this river, in the twelfth and thirteenth lots of the eleventh range
of Stoke Township, and from the proximity of this exposure to
the north-west flank of the mountains, it seems probable that it
marks the position of a third synclinal, being connected with one
of the two undulations stated to be parallel and subordinate to
the anticlinal of the Stoke Mountain range ; this anticlinal thus
making the sixteenth that can be distinguished between the
Richelieu and Lennoxville, on a line passing through St. Hya-
cinthe, in a distance of about sixty-five miles. The clay slates
which are beneath the Potton Ferry and Georgeville limestones,
and appearing on the St. Francis, have been found also on the new
road cut through to Danville from Rice's settlement, though
absent on the south-eastern flank of the Stoke Mountain range,
from what is considered an analogous position between that
range and the equivalent limestones of Magoon's Point and
Dudswell, and of all the intermediate localities, yet so often in
other places precede the limestone in ascending series, that it
appears probable they must be classed with the Upper Silurian
division. On Lake Aylmer some beds of the calcareous part of
the formation,'but without fossils, are seen at the upper point sepa-
rating Ward's Bay from the body of the lake ; within the bay
there is a small point which is composed of hard sandstone and
very coarse conglomerate beds, some of the rounded masses
constituting which are a foot in diameter, most of them being
very feldspathic and appearing to be of igneous origin ; these
sandstones and conglomerates, interstratified with hard, fine
green slates, dip S. S. E. mag. ^SO'*, and have a breadth of about
110 yards, and they are followed to the northward by 140 yards

of the same green slates without sandstones : these strata may
possibly belong to the lower rocks, but clay slates supposed to
belong to the upper division succeed, and have a transverse
breadth of four miles and a half to Lake Colombe on the road
to Wolfestown, w^her-e they reach the band of calcareous serpen-
tine that has been mentioned. On the south side of Lake
Aylmer on the road through Strafford, calcareous strata of the
Upper Silurian series without fossils, are met with about two
and a quarter miles from the water's edge, on the forty-fifth lot,
the interval being occupied by rocks of the lowe * series, con-
sisting of green chloritic slates and sandstones, with an obscure
indication of an ophitic character on the thirty-ninth lot, and slates
of a talcose character nearer the lake, with a band of dolomite
about twenty-five yards wide, on the twenty-eighth lot. The
bed of the St. Francis River, between Lake Aylmer and Lake
St. Francis, consists of clay slates, often shewing flat nodules of
gray, yellow weathering limestone, and at the foot of the lake
they occupy about half to three-quarters of a mile between the
water's edge and the magnesian rocks and epidotic conglome-
rates of the lower series. They also compose both sides of the
lake further up, first becoming interstratified with occasional
layers of an argillaceous sandstone, and then assuming a slightly
calcareous character ; a few beds more arenaceous than others,
are strongly marked by the presence of lime. About seven
miles up the lake^ a 4ittle way above the mouth of the Blueberry
River, an intrusive mass of granite forms opposite points,
bearing nearly E. and W. of one another ; the breadth of the
granite appears to be about 400 yards, and where the strata
come in contact with it on the north side, the effect of the igneous
rock on them is plainly discernible, in the presence of an abun-
dance of. small crystals of brilliant mica, and reddish andalusite
in the argillaceous beds, while the sandstones have been converted
to a dark gray quartz rock with disseminated grains of pyrites.
On the worn surfaces of loose fragments of slate found in several
parts round the lake, slender raised forms were attributed to the
presence of imperfect crystallizations of the second named
mineral. Three miles beyond the granite tw^o opposite points
jut out and form the Narrows ; that on the right side consists

of talcose slates of a very quartzose character, showing a
breadth of about 300 yards, and they are immediately succeeded
to the south by two or three fossiliferous layers of limestone, the •
dip, which is N. N. W. mag. <84, very probably shewing an
inversion of the strata. The breadth of this fossiliferous part
does not exceed tèn feet, and it is followed by light-gray, thin-
bedded limestones weathering to a yellowish red. Beyond these
occur coarse and more arenaceous limestones, mixed with
micaceo-calcareous sandstones, and these latter become inter-
stratified with other sandstones that contain little or no lime,
clay slates often separating the beds.

On an excursion of twenty miles across the forest, from Lake
St. Francis to Lake Megantic, all the exposures of rock, which
were not numerous, and with the exception of the granite in
intrusions, in no case extensive, bore the character of the less
calcareous strata of those last described ; but on the western
side and at the south end of Lake Megantic, chloritic and epidotie
rocks, slightly talcose slates, and quartz rock again made their
appearance, artd it is not improbable that they belong to the lower
series. A granitic dyke was observed to intersect these strata
about a mile and a half from the upper end of the lake,
and in the region between the lake and the St. Francis,
there are great intrusive mountain masses of granite, which very
probably produce considerable disturbance of the stratification.
The largest mass constitutes the Great Megantic Mountain at
the united corners of Hampden, Marston and Ditton, which with
a length of six miles and a breadth of three miles, may cover an
area of twelve square miles.. This mountain was not visited by
any of our party, but I have been assured by a competent person
that the rock is of the same lithological character as the intrusions
farther west. Another large nucleus was met with in the Little
Megantic Mountain, which may cover an area of six square
miles, not over from one to two miles removed to the south-west
of the line between Aylmer and Gayhurst Townships. The
rock was observed in a hill about a mile to the south-east of
Lake Louisa ; in another upwards of three miles long in Wins-
iow, about five miles south-east of Lake Aylmer ; and in two
small hills on the Felton River, which discharges into Lake St.

Francis on the left side, one of them about half a mile, the other
three miles up from the mouth ; and it is very probable that
most of the abrupt isolated hills of the district are composed of
it. The bold and pointed form of Gosford Mountain at the
head of the Arnold River, flowing in at the upper extremity of
Lake Megantic^ induces me to suppose it will be found to be com-
posed of granite, and being aware from examination many years
ago, that the rock crosses the Kennebec road a short distance
within the boundary line of the State of Maine, and there con-
stitutes bold mountains on each side of the road, it appears
probable that it will be found to form the range of elevations,
described as running to Bathurst on the Bay Chaleur, where its
presence has already been mentioned in a previous Report, and
where it has the same lithological aspect.

On the Chaudière, between Lake Megantic and the Great or
Jersey Fall, a distance of about thirty-seven miles, the only rocks
seen were fine and coarse gray micaceous clay slates, with gray
micaceo-argillaceous sandstone, weathering greenish in the air,
and becoming very smooth and reddish when exposed to the run
of the stream, and an occasional band of hard drab sandstone,
almost a quartz rock, with some few grains of feldspar. At the
Great Fall there is a considerable exposure, measuring about
150 yards across the strata, which appear to dip S. 20° E. mag*
<62°. The beds consist chiefly of gray sandstones, some of
which are schistose and verge on a coarse mica slate, while
others are massive ; they weather of a greenish tinge where
untouched by the water, but where acted on by occasional floods
they have a reddish cast; they are4nterstratified with calcare-
ous bands which are harsh and gritty to the touch, and no doubt
containing a great preponderance of sand, none of them would
burn to lime ; other and thinner bands in the rock are blackish
on the exterior, and these seem to become smoother than the
rest, but they are soft and wear into grooves, while the sand-
stones stand out in relief; the black bands are finely laminated
and split into brittle plates with glossy surfaces ; the sandstones
weather to a lighter gray than the calcareous beds, some of
which approach a dull pale olive green on the exterior. A
quarter of a mile below the fall, there is another exposure of

rocks of the same kind with more lime in some of the beds,
and the same character pervades such strata as were seen to the
junction of the Rivière du Loup, and three miles up this tributary ;
it also belongs to those between this tributary and the Rivière
à la Famine, with the exception of the fossiliferous limestone met
with on the latter. The fossiliferDus beds occupy a low ridge
removed a short distance from the stream, and are confined to a
breadth not exceeding ten to twenty yards, while about one acre
to the south-east of them there is an exposure of slaty micaceous
limestone without fossils. The bed of the stream a short distance
up, is occupied by interstratified slates and sandstones, which
with a dip S. 20 E. mag. <65°, plunge under the fossiliferous
strata ; they are very similar in color and general character to
those of the Great Fall on the Chaudière, there being however a
larger proportion of the slates ; the sandstones often contain
calcareous sub-lenticular patches, and are sometimes slightly
calcareous throughout. In the valley of the Chaudière it is very
difficult to determine with precision, where, the line between the
superior and inferior Silurian rocks should be drawn ; there
seems to be a gradual pa^ssage from the one to the other for a
considerable distance, and it is only on arriving within a mile of
the serpentine of the Guillaume that the doubt diminishes. So
far down as the Touffe des Pins, notwithstanding the presence
of a few very thin bands or partings of a peculiar dingy, olive-
green serpentine, mentioned in a previous Report, it appears
probable, on a re-examination of the rocks, and a comparison of
them with those north of the fossiliferous limestone on Lake St.
Francis, that they belong to the upper series. The clay slates
in the bed of the Touffe des Pins about a mile from the mouth,
are of a bluish black, striped with a rather lighter color ; they
are occasionally slightly calcareous, while the sandstones which
are interstratified with them are strongly so, and shew also
occasional disseminated crystals of feldspar. At the turn
in the River Chaudière, about a mile and a half above
St. Francis church, a thick and strongly feldspathic bed
is followed three hundred yards farther down by clay slates
and a few bands of dark gray quartz rock, associated with
coarse dark gray or nearly black limestone, very much re-

sembling some of the limestones of the upper series. At the
elbow in the river below this, another thick and strongly feld-
spathic rock occurs, a light gray bed subordinate to which is
strongly calcareous ; just above the church, dark gray and
black clay slates prevail, inter stratified with a few bands of
sandstone, and little change is met with until reaching a corneous
rock displaying diallage, standing boldly up by the side of the
road on the right side of the river, about a mile above the Guil-
laume.

The section on Temiscouata Lake in succession to that on the
Portage road, displays some new features in the upper rocks.
That part of the lake which is above Fort Ingall extends to the
north-eastward on the strike of the formation, at right angles
to the part below, which with the Madawaska River to the
Little Falls, and the St. John's River in continuation, to the
vicinity of Woodstock, affords the means of a transverse inspec-
tion. The upper part of the lake on the northwest side, gives a
fuller development of the strata which occupy the last two and
a-half miles on the road, and probably belong to the upper series.
Towards the upper part of the lake, that is to say above Sandy
Point, which is four and. a-half miles from the Fort, they consist
of gray slaty limestones, splitting into thin firm laminae, appa-
rently in the direction of the beds which are nearly vertical, ar^d
would yield excellent tiles and flag stones ; lower down gray
clay slates are interstratified with calcareous sandstones, which
weather to a yellow earth or rotten stone, and in some parts
nodules of the same character occur ; in addition to these strata
clay slates sometimes of a dark and sometimes of a lead gray,
are found interstratified with thin bands and lenticular patches
of a fibrous limestone, the fibrous structure running at right
angles to the beds and quite across them ; these slates and fibrous
bands of limestone prevail not only on the north-west side of the
lake and for a mile up to the mill on the Ruisseau du Petit Lac,
or Mill Brook, but they were observed extending along the south-
east side of the lake from the head to the point immediately
opposite the mill brook, where there is some irregularity, and
where the gray slates are associated with beds of calcareous
sandstone, and arenaceous limestone with dark banded green

slates. An ioterstratification of beds similar to these, has been
mentioned in a previous Report, as met with north-west of the
Mountains of Notre Dame on the Chat River in the District of
Gaspe, and the peculiarity of the fibrous structure of the calca-
reous bands is so striking, as to induce me to suppose that the
rocks must be equivalent.

After an interval of three quarters of a mile to the south-easty
transverse to the stratification, in which no exposure occurs,
v/e come upon the rocks which constitute Mount Wissick {the
Beaver Cabin)^ as 'it was anciently iiamed by the Indians, or
Mount Lenox, as it is designated in recent maps; these in as-
cending succession appear to be as follows: —

Feet.

Whitish massive sandstone of a moderate!}' fine grain 45

Coarse ealcareous conglomerate; the matrix is a greenish sand, and it
holds a large amount of angul ir fragments and some rounded forms
of gray limestone, with a much smaller number of quartz pebbles ;
no fossils vvere observed in the limestone pebbles and fragment^... 20

Measures concealed 90

Green sandstone, with a few conglomerate bands similar to the previ-
ous one 20

Red and green «haie in alternating bands, none of v/hich were observed
to be calcareous; there are three successive exposures of this
shale, with fossiliferous limestones between them, but they are
supposed, from changes in the direction of the strike and one
observed anticlinal, to be repetitions, the shale being subjacent to

the limestone 125

Gray nodular limestone well stored with fossils; the limestone presents
a columnar structure at right angles to the beds, occasioned by
two sets of joints dividing the beds into sub-right rhombic prisms 50

Gray hard sandstone ; no fossils.. , ... 10

(iray fossiliferous limestone, with a columnar structure 20

Gray arenaceous limestones and calcareous sandstones, with fossils at
the base and at the summit, and probably all through; some of the
beds have but very little lime, and many may have none at all.
This constitutes the main body of Wissick Mountain, and the
thickness is derived from the height of the Mountain, which is
550 feet, no rocks being seen across the measures from the band
of gray sandstone above mentioned for a considerable distance... 500

880

To the centre of the valley between Mount Wissick and the
next ridge running to Black Point, there would, if the dip remained
constant all the way at that which the mountain shews (150°
mag. < 13°), be room for an addition of 1000 feet to the above;
but no exposure of the strata appears on either side of the lake
to tell of what the interval may be composed, and between the
centre of the valley and the rock of Black Point there is another
concealed interval, which directly across the measures would be
four hundred yards.

Black Point, and Burnt Point which is opposite, consist of
a very coarse conglomerate, composed chiefly of quartz rock
and limestone pebbles, the former prevailing ; the colors of the
quartz rock pebbles, which occasionally hold a few spangles
of mica, are green and gray, but principally green, and some of
them are six to eight inches and even a foot in diameter ; the
calcareous pebbles weather in general to a yellowish cast, but
some of them remain gray ; some of the pebbles consist of red
slate ; the matrix of the rock is a sandstone of a dark gray color
and it appears to be slighly calcareous. The first or lowest band
of 'this conglomerate is about 400 feet thick, and it is fol-
lowed by others varying from one to sixty feet, which are
separated by beds of sandstone of from one to fifteen feet thick.
The whole breadth of these coarse rocks is about 400 yards,
and the dip remains very uniformly, 140° mag. < 51° to 56°,
w^hich would give a total thickness of very nearly 1000 feet.

This conglomerate rock constitutes a sharp and prominent
ridge, which can be traced, as viewed Irom the summit of Mount
Wissick, running far into the country north-east of the lake on the
north-west side of the Toledo River, whose course is very proba-
bly guided by it for ten or twelve miles. From the same moun-
tain, the course of the fossiliferous ridge to which it belongs, can
be seen extending in a parallel line for upwards of ten miles,
the last visible eminence in the line bearing 43^^ mag. On the
west side of the lake the fossiliferous band is not so conspicu-
ous, and not so clearly traceable, but it was supposed to direct
its course to a hill on the north side of the Cabineau River, in
the bearing 223° mag., while the conglomerate, it was presumed,
would hold to a better marked ridge which occupies the south

side. With a hope of ascertaining the intermediate strata, so
covered up on the lake, we ascended the Cabineau for four miles,
in which only two exposures of rock were met with ; the first,
nearly three miles from the mouth, consisted of thin gray con-
torted limestone beds, without fossils ; and the second half a mile
beyond, of green slate banded with black, and interstratified
with thin limestone bands, also without fossils ; if the limestones
of the exposure had been fibrous, which they were not, the
measures would have resembled those below the Mount Wissick
rocks.

Beyond the conglomerates of Burnt Point, the next rock ex-
posed is a soft gray scaly argillaceous slate, becoming a little
lighter in color under the action of the weather, which splits it
into small flat fragments ; on the west side of the lake it occu-
pies about three quarters of a mile, in the distance of a mile and
a half across the measures, and it probably forms the bed of the
Toledo a few miles up from its mouth ; it is not improbable that
it is much contorted, and it is impossible to state the thickness it
may. attain.

The rocks which immediately succeed this slate on the west
side of the lake, are given in the following horizontal section,
reduced to dimensions at right angles to the general strike : —

Yards.

Gray argillaceous scaly slates of the same kind as described above,
interstratified with bands of sandstone, varying in thickness from
an eighth of an inch to one inch ; some of the bands are partially
calcareous, .and they are in general cut by veins of quartz not

exceeding the thickness of paper 31

Measures concealed 14

Gray argillaceous slate with sandstone bands as before 69

Measures concealed, but supposed to be the same 13

Measures concealed, but so thickly covered with large angular blocks
of a light gray sandstone with a greenish tint, of the same cha-
acter as the bands, that there is little doubt much of it is present

in thick beds 24

Satidstone of the same character as before, butin thick beds; it is of a
light gray color, slightly tinged with green, hard and fine grained,
very nearly approaching a granular quartz rock, and it is in the
slightest degrée possiblecalcareous. The dip is 143« mag. <83<*... 7

Measures concealed, but probably the same sandstone » 38

Yards.

Light gray sandstone of the same character as before, with a few beds
of slate separating the layers 9

Measures concealed , 7

Light gray sandstone as before, weathering of a lighter gray than the
internal color 10

Gray argillaceous slate, weathering green and crumbling under the

influence of the weather 1

—223

Dark gray altered argillaceous sandstone, very slightly calcareous ; it
has a greenish cast internally, and weathers more green externally ;
there are a few quartz pebbles at the bottom of the bed ; fragments
of the rock held in a proper position with respect to the light have
a peculiar glimmering lustre from the symmetrical arrangement
of a multitude of minute crystals of feldspar.... 10

Dark gray tough argillaceous sandstone of a similar character without
any calcareous matter, alternating with beds of an impalpable
grain, and as hard as jasper, in fact a perfect jasper, the color in
some beds being a uniform black tinged with purple lO

Measures concealed, probably beds of a similar kind; this constitutes
Pointe aux Trembles 30

Greenish tough argillaceous sandstone alternating with beds of a uni-
form purplish chocolate colored jasper ; the sandstone beds have *
grains of red in them mixed with the green, but the general tinge
is green 25

Measures concealed 86

—161

Greenish tough argillaceous sandstone ; in some parts it holds a few
pebbles of a highly crystalline character, and of a red color, and
others of gray and greenish hues ; the rock may be termed a
pebbly sandstone, but the pebbles are very obscure and tightly
soldered into the matrix; fractures go through both without de-
flection , 1&

Measures concealed 18

Greenish tough sandstone as before; the occasional presence of pebbles
is more observable than before ; they sometimes stand up in relief
on the surface, and the rock towards the top partakes more of a
conglomerate character; some of the pebbles are five to six inches
in diameter, and they are all highly crystalline, appearing in gen-
eral to be of metamorphic origin. The matrix which is not very
fine continues to be a mixture of red and green grains, giving a
greenish tinge in the aggregate; some of the interstratified bands
are of a darker hue than the general color, approaching an iron
gray, but weathering to a yellowish white ; by these bands and by
bands of a deep purplish red slate the dip can be readily distin-

Yards.

guished, being 144® mag. <76'*. There are thin vertical trans-
verse veins of epidote cutting some parts, and the same mineral
seems to prevail also as a constituent of patches of the rock; there
is a very regular set of joints in the rock of which the underlie is

295« mag. <22^'» 96

—132

516

These rocks constitute two points on the west side of the lake ;
the upper one being called Pointe aux Trembles, is very con-
spicuous, just opposite to the Toledo River ; the second point is
of little or no importance in the configuration of the coast, but
it runs back into a ridge, with a valley on each side of it, which
well marks the run of the sandstone composing it.

About a hundred yards over a quarter of a mile from the last
mentioned sandstones, at right angles to the strike, the rocks
of the next point would come upon the section, and the inter-
val, judging by the first rocks^seen on the south side of the
Toledo, at a corresponding point, would possibly be calca-
reous slate, of a blueish gray color and fine texture, with some
thin bands and patches of a rather coarse grain. The strati-
graphical divisions of these slates are obliterated by cementation,
and it is only by slight difierences of color that the beds can be
distinguished. These slates are followed by gray slates, which
are not calcareous ; they weather to a dull olive green and cleave
into very thin leaves, the surfaces of which have a dull glossy
lustre, and the slates appear to be slightly micaceous ; some faint
differences of color shew the original beds, which are very thin.
They pass into a gray sandstone, which weathers greenish;
it is tough, slightly calcareous, and slightly micaceous ; it is
fine grained and has a dull granular earthy fracture ; the
slates and sandstones alternate and pass into one another by
intermediate qualities of rock. They all weather greenish, but
this is where washed by the water and spray of the lake ; where
surfaces were seen removed from the Lake and denuded of moss
and trees, they were often found to be of a dull white with a
small amount of reddish yellow in it, perhaps the result of the
action of fire. The beds succeeding the calcareous slates have

a transverse measure of 290 yards, with a dip, when it could be
determined, of 145° mag. <50°.

The next five miles across the measures are occupied on the
west side of the lake, by calcareo-argillaceous slates, occa-
sionally interstratified with non-calcareous bands, and som.e of
the beds are more arenaceous than others ; the colors are dark
blueish gray, light gray and black ; the divisions of the original
bedding are obliterated by cementation, and in fresh fractures it
is only by the colors, the differences of which are often very
obscure, that the stratification can be made out ; but the action
of the weather and water on the ice-rounded or moutonné forms
which come upon the lake, distinctly shews the bedding by the
unequal wear of the more and less calcareous layers, the one
standing out in beads and the other re-entering in grooves. The
beds are almost universally thin, and the surfaces give a pictorial
display of a vafet variety of the most complicated contortions,
sometimes in folds leaning over one another to the north west,
and sometimes in involved arrangements, which it is quite im-
possible to disentangle or understand, without a larger exposure
than usually appears ; combined with the contortions there are
often disruptions or dislocations, which however shew no veins
of interposed foreign material, the torn and twisted mass having
been apparently compressed together and become cemented in
such a way, that except for the colors or unequal wear it would
never be suspected that it had been disturbed at all. In some
parts however, these contorted rocks are cut up by a multitude
of small veins of calcareous spar. In the vicinity of the Little
Island, which stands opposite the Grand Bay, a span of three
quarters of a mile across the measures, including the island,
shews no calcareous matter in the slate, which weathers rather
greener than the beds higher up, but there is a small amount of
lime in the hard bands, which are very thin sandstones. Calca-
reo-argillaceous slate then appears again and continues for
the succeeding mile and a half, and the remaining distance to
the exit of the lake, another mile and a half transversely to
the general strike, shews an occasional thicker bed of sandstone,
gray calcareo-argillaceous slates holding gray thin calcareous
sandstones, and black and dark gray non-calcareous beds, inter-

stratified with light gray slightly calcareous bands with more or
less sand ; the last exposure, just at the exit, on the right bank
of the Madawaska, consists of non-calcareous sandstones and
slates, which are gray internally, but weather to a dull olive
green, resembling those near the Toledo River ; the beds are all
slightly micaceous, the slates more than the sandstones.

About half a mile down the Madawaska, where the rock
comes close upon the river, the same greenish weathering, gray^
slightly micaceous slate is seen, with thin light colored bands
marking the bedding, and these thin bands are slightly calca-
reous, while the darker part is not. The exposures on the river,
all the way to the Little Falls at its mouth, are by no means
numerous, and they appear to consist pretty uniformly of the
same slates and sandstones, the slates vastly prevailing and
occasionall)^ displaying a small amount of calcareous material,
as where the hills approach the right bank between the tenth
and eleventh mile posts. At the Little Falls the color of the rock
is gray internally, weathering generally to a dull obscure olive
green, but sometimes so decided as to give a chloritic aspect, and
the slate which is micaceous is interstratified with occasional
hard compact bands cleaving with difficulty, and possessed of
sufficient grit to entitle them to the name of sandstones. Rocks
of a similar general quality are seen on the St. John River, below
the Little Falls, as for example near the Squesibish, where there
is a transverse exposure of 200 to 300 yards, and where the
slate, internally gray, weathers slightly greenish, and is interstra-
tified with bands of slightly calcareous sandstone, some of which
are four and five inches thick, and occasionally even a foot ;
the bedding is well displayed at the place, and a few contortions
in the stratification are visible.

Beyond this, about a mile and a quarter above the Shi-
guash, a band of coarse conglomerate crosses the road,
which bears a strong resemblance to the Black Point con-
glomerate on Lake Temiscouata, and holds a great amount
of large pebbles and small boulders of black limestone, wea-
thering to an ash gray ; some of the calcareous pebbles are
themselves of a conglomerate character, and their constituent
pebbles shew a derivation from a stratified formation, while

their matrix holds organic remains ; with the calcareous pebbles
of the final conglomerate are mingled others of silicious char-
acter, among them some of black jasper and chalcedonic quartz,
and several are found of blackish green serpentine ; the matrix
is a hard calcareous sandstone, with grains of transparent and
colorless, opaque white and other colored quartz ; internally it is
gray and weathers to a yellowish tinge. Vertical beds of the
conglomerate running in the direction 54° mag. alternate with
beds of sandstone much of the same character as the matrix,
and a breadth of about seventy-five yards is visible, giving a
thickness of 225 feet, and as the strata on each side are concealed,
it may be greater, particularly on the south-east side, where the
ground rises into a small hill for a quarter of a mile. At this
distance these conglomerates are followed by calcareous slates,
which at first are interstratified with a few bands of sandstone,
resembling that associated with the conglomerate, but farther on
display strongly calcareous beds weathering to an impure rotten
stone, and sometimes the slates, without being calcareous them-
selves, are interstratified with slightly calcareous sandstones.
These alterations are occasionally visible for about 500 yards,
between w^hich and the Shiguash there were no exposures on
the road ; and thé examination w^as not carried beyond this
stream. It is not improbable that this band of conglomerate may
be equivalent to that of Black Point, and if such be the case, it
is not unreasonable to expect that limestones equivalent to those
of Mount Wissick should appear at some distance beyond it,
succeeded possibly by rocks of the lower Silurian epoch, before
reaching the intrusive granitic axis, where it crosses the St.
John River.

On the St. John River, rocks similar to those of the Little Falls
and the lower part of the Madawaska, prevail as far up as
we reached, and the same exist on the lower part of another
tributary, the St. Francis ; the slates were in general micaceous
and only occasionally calcareous, and the same may be said of the
sandstones. We spent ten days in the examination of this tri-
butary, and though it is not over twenty miles from the Mada-
waska, we were not successful in finding any of the conspicuous-
ly marked rocks of Temiscouata Lake ; we searched in vain

for the Point aux Trembles sandstones and jaspers, for the
Black Pomt calcareous conglomerates, the Mount Wissick fos-
siliferous limestones, and the red and green shales beneath them,
and all that we could establish after ascending to the head of
the third lake, called by the Indians Wollenabégeg, or the
Water Basin, was that the farthest down exposure of a coarse
greenish chloritic sandstone associated with green slates, which
we supposed to belong to the lower series of rocks, occurred
just to the north of the Province Line, at the foot of this lake, be-
low which the country consisted chiefly of clay slate ; that the
most calcareous ridge, which however shewed no fossils, and did
not possess so much lime as to give what could be called lime-
stones, occurred about three miles above the Middle Lake, which
goes also by the name of Bow Lake, or, as the Indians call it,
Battéwichcàgameg, (the lake encircled with burnt land). A
mountain on the north-east side of this lake, displayed some
strong beds of sandstone, associated with blueish black or dark
gray slates, both slightly micaceous, the sandstones more so than
the slates, but the sandstones alone slightly calcareous ; and simi-
lar micaceous and occasionally slightly calcareous rocks pre-
vailed to the mouth.

On the Black River, twenty miles above the St. Francis, there
occur the same gray micaceous slates and sandstones, occasion-
ally slightly calcareous ; the sandstones weather greenish, and
when aiTected by the water, acquire a slightly reddish tinge.
Large angular blocks of the calcareous conglomerate were met
with, but the rock was not found in place. In the vicinity of
the Province Line, both below and about half a mile above it,
calcareous slates occur, with black or dark gray coarse limestone
bands, similar to those some distance above the fossiliferous
limestones on the Chaudière and the St. Francis ; and half a
mile above this there is seen a conglomerate of which three
exposures occur in 300 yards, consisting of boulders of fine sili-
cious conglomerate and of gray quartz rock, with blackish
vitreous quartz grains, and fragments of green slate, and of this
green slate in a state of comminution, and of fine gray slate, the
matrix appears to be composed. The double nature of the con-
glomerate, from the presence of conglomerate pebbles resembling

in lithological character some of the lower fine conglomerates,
induces me to think the rock may belong to the upper series.
The sandstones of the fifth division of the lower series were met
with 800 to 400 yards farther up the stream, and as far as
examined, a distance of about a mile and a quarter, they are
distinguished by those marks which characterise them nearer
the St. Lawrence ; they are massive, coarse grained, slightly
micaceous and slightly chloritic, they shew scattered spangles
of plumbago, and they are interstratified with an occasional
band of red slate.

Materials capable of Economic application.

The general nature of the materials capable of economic
application, accompanying the rocks that have been described,
as well as several of their localities, have already been stated
in the Report on the Eastern Townships, and it only remains to
mention such additional localities of their occurrence as have
been recently ascertained.

Bog Iron Ore. — What appears to be a small deposit of Bog Iron
Ore, was met with on the twelfth lot of the fourth range of
Ireland, a little to the south-east of the middle of the lot ; it
occurs on the stream from Black Lake, and it is exposed on the
north-east bank of it ; the bed was about fifteen inches thick,
but the whole area that could be traced had a breadth of no
more than five feet and a length of only fifteen yards, extending
just across the stream, and it could not be discovered beyond the
bank on either side.

Another deposit occurs on the east side of the Chaudière in
St. Lambert, on the Seignory of Lauzon, on the property of
Antoine Hollie ; it was first observed on the road, and with a
breadth of thirty yards, it was ascertained to extend sixty yards
to the south-east, but as the surface continues level in the same
direction for a considerable distance, the area may be much
greater than the measure specified. The land was partially
covered with water and thick underbrush, and it was not found
practicable to effect a thorough examination, without conside-
rable delay a|^d expense ; the thickness of the bed appears to be
about twenty inches.

A third locality was ascertained to exist on the property of
Captain Morin, about one mile above the junction of the two
branches of the Rivière du Sud in the Seignory of St. Vallier ;
two areas in this locality were examined ; the first was about
300 yards north-west from the mill on the main branch about a
mile and a quarter above the junction ; it extended northward
380 yards, with a breadth of twenty-eight yards and a thickness
of about twenty inches ; the next area is removed about forty yards
farther west, and was measured 1200 yards northward, with an
average breadth of twenty-four yards, and a thickness of twelve
to twenty inches. It was stated by Captain Morin that other
areas are met with two miles to the south-east of the main
branch, and also to the north-west of the smaller branch in St.
Michael, and it appears not improbable, that the quantity in the
whole neighborhood may be sufficient to become economically
available.

Copper Ore, — Traces of copper ore were met with in two
localities in the valley of the Chaudière, which appear to be in
nearly equivalent geological positions in regard to the strati-
fication of the country. One of them is on the land of Ignace
Tardi, in the Seignory of St. Joseph, on the left side of the river,
and about a mile removed from it, nearly opposite the road above
the Church leading out to Frampton, where small spots of vitre-
ous copper occur disseminated in quartz with talc, chlorite and
earthy ferruginous oxyd of manganese, filling inconsiderable
cracks in disturbed strata, consisting of red and green slate and
green sandstone with occasional patches of red limestone. The
second locality is on the Seignory of St. Mary, on the right bank
of the river towards the front of the third concession, in a line
with a point about a mile above the Church. The rock of the
country is here also red and green slate of a talcose character with
green chloritic sandstones on each side of it. A few bands of red
dolomitic limestone are interstratified with the red slate ; they
are much cut up by thin reticulating veins of quartz, and present
patches of red jasper and specular iron, as well as talcose slate. •
The strata display sharp plications, and in some of the cracks,
resulting from the contortions, strings and short partial veins of
quartz and calcspar with chlorite and talc in the limestone hold

spots of vitreous and pyritous copper, while small fissures and
cleavage joints are coated vs^ith green carbonate. In many parts
patches of the disturbed and broken limestone have decayed to
a dark browTi earth, holding iron, manganese and a trace of
copper, and cavities in the rock are lined w^ith this ; no regular
lode could be discovered, and the quantity of copper is too small
to be available.

Quarries having been opened in the limestone of the fiftieth and
fifty-first lots of the twenty-first range of Upton, for the purposes
of the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad, the vein of copper
ore, which in a previous Report was mentioned as existing in
the latter numbered lot, has become more exposed to view, and
the facts furnished by a subsequent examination of the locality
serve to give a better understanding of the probable mode in
which the ore occurs. Several spots of ore running in a line
N. W. and S. E., nearly across the general range of the lime-
stone, induced the supposition that the lode was transverse to
the stratification, but a bed of a conglomerate character, which
accompanies the fine grained beds, having been found to make
a sudden turn parallel to the course of the ore, it seems probable
that in this case, as in all others in which metalliferous viens
have been met with in the rocks of that part of the Province,-
the ore may in reality run with the strata^ and the irregularity
bé due to a twist in the stratification. The ore is very irregularly
distributed in bunches, some of which might produce five, and
others two to three hundred weights of between twenty and
thirty per cent, to a fathom of ground ; but the irregularities
appear too great to render the ore capable of being profitably
mined, unless as an adjunct to the quarrying of the rock for the
purposes of obtaining materials for building or for burning to
lime.

Chramic Iron. — A bed of chromic iron was met with in the
augmentation of Ham, in the vicinity of the fifty-third mile
post on the Gosford road, being six miles from Rice's settlement ;.
• it occurs in serpentine in the north-west corner of the twenty-
first lot of the second range of the augmentation, and shews
a thickness of twelve to fourteen inches ; a length of five yard»
of the bed was visible, running with the general direction of the

serpentine at the spot, E. N. E. and W. S. W. mag. The ore is
of a brilliant black and highly crystalline ; and though it has not
yet been analyzed, it is probable it will equal if not surpass in
richness, the samples heretofore tried from other Canadian
localities.

Farther to the N. E. in the same band of serpentine, on a small
island in Breeches Lake in the Township of Garthby, opposite
the fifth range of Ireland, there is a considerable amount of
disseminated crystals of chromic iron running in parallel lines,
but not in sufficient aggregation to be workable. The fact
however is worthy of being noted, in consequence of the great
development which the band of serpentine displays about six
miles farther on, in Ireland and Coleraine, where as already
stated, there exists an area of the rock of fifteen square miles,
affording a favorable opportunity for researches for the mineral.

Gold. — The occurrence of gold in the gravel of the valley of
the Touffe des Pins, a tributary of the Chaudière, has already
been mentioned in a previous Report, and on revisiting the
Seignory of Vaudreuil Beauce, a few days were spent in endea-
voring to ascertain over what breadth across the stratification,
the auriferous gravel might extend. Seven different places were
tried, and the metal found in five of them ; no attempt was
made to determine in what quantity it existed, as without a
greater expenditure both of time and money than the funds de-
voted to the Survey would permit, no such result as might have
been considered a just criterion could possibly have been arrived at.
We were satisfied to establish the fact of its presence merely, and
the smallest particle of the metal was deemed sufficient for the
purpose ; two of the spots were indicated to us by Mr. Angers
as localities in which he had himself met with traces ; one of them
was on a small brook, tributary to the Rivière à la Famine, enter-
ing it on the south side about four or five miles from its mouth.
About a mile and a-half above the fall on the Famine, there
commences an extensive deposit of clay, sand and gravel ; we
followed the section made through it by the river for about a mile
and a-half, and constantly found the clay beneath and the gravel
resting on it; towards the top of the gravel, the bank often
presented a horizontal deposit of the mingled oxyds of iron and

manganese, in some parts six to eight inches thick, filling the
interstices among pebbles of various kinds, many of them being
clay and talcose slate, quartz rock, chloritic sandstone, and
some of them of white vitreous quartz with grains of black
magnetic iron sand in the finer parts. The same deposit
with the same arrangement exists on a small brook which gives
a section through it at right angles to the main stream, on the S.
E. side ; ascending this about the third of a mile, and trjring a
few pounds of the gravel at the top which had not previously
been moved, a small particle of the metal was immediately
met with. Another locality was about a mile up the stream
which discharges into the Chaudière, opposite the Famine, on the
Seignory of Aubert Gallion, being on the twenty-second lot of
the doinaine, where the metal was first observed by Mr. For-
tier, one of the censitaires^ in a narrow ravine with steep
precipices of clay slate on each, side ; it occurs in the clefts of
the slate constituting the bed of the stream, and in the clay and
gravel immediately on the top of the rock, mingled with mag-
netic and chromic iron ; the quantity of gravel at the spot is
but small in consequence of the narrowness of the ravine,
through which the water rushes with great violence during the
freshets of spring ; about a grain's weight of gold was here ob-
tained ; I have since been informed by Mr. Fortier, that he has
traced it two miles farther up the stream. The metal was also
met with close by the side of the river road, where it is crossed
by the brook next below the previous stream. Mr. Hunt found
traces of it in the gravel at the foot of the precipice of serpen-
tine, just below the fall of the Guillaume River, where it was
associated with grains of magnetic and chromic iron, as well
as of rutile and ilmenite. He also discovered it about a mile
below the Great Fall on the Bras, in similar gravel lying close
on clay slate, where it could not be far removed from the band
of serpentine constituting the rock of the fall.

These five localities, as well as that of the Touffe des Pins above
mentioned, the Ruisseau Lessard, and the Ruisseau du Lac
or du Moulin, in both of which particles have been met
with, are all included in an area of about sixty to eighty
square miles, with a breadth of about ten miles across the

stratification, and I have been informed that traces of the
metal have been found on the River Metgermet, flowing into
th^ Rivière du Loup, about fifteen miles still farther to the
south-east than the Rivière à la Famine. Without a much
more detailed and expensive examination than can be given to
any one locality, on a Survey that is expected to embrace v^ithin
a reasonable period an inspection of the whole Province, it
would be premature either to assert or deny, that the precious
metal may be held in sufiicient quantities to yield a profitable
return.

Bog Manganese. — Indications of bog manganese were observed
in Tring, on the road from Lambton to St. Francois Beauce,
near the eastern boundary of the Township ; the deposit was
visible for several yards on each side of the road for the depth
of a few inches, and it was traceable into a field on the north
side, where it became a foot thick ; from the difficulties of the
ground however, it could not be followed farther on one side
than the edge of a swamp filled with boulders, while on the
other it appeared to thin out, and the locality does not seem to
promise any great economic result. The produce of the ore in
pure peroxyd, according to the analysis of Mr. Hunt, is 25 per
cent.

Indications of the same ore exist on several successive farms
on the west side of the Chaudière, opposite to the mouth of the
Famine River, running across the lots and parallel with the
bank of the Chaudière. On one of the lots, in the occupation of
John Harvey, it was followed for two acres with a breadth how^-
ever, not exceeding twenty yards, and from this it was traced
about three acres to the south-east and about six acres to the
north-west. It appears to occur in desseminated nodules, similar
to those mentioned in a previous Report as met with on the
ninth lot of the tenth range of Stanstead, but in some spots in
the area, the ore was found in continuous patches of a few feet
diameter, with a uniform thickness of two to four inches. The
yield in peroxyd is 20.5 per cent.

The ore was met with also in the Seignory of St. Mary, at
the junction of the road between the second and third ranges, and
that to Frampton, on the land of Etienne Grégoire ; the area

over which it could be traced did not exceed sixteen yards by
ten yards, but the thickness appeared to be about two feet in the
centre, thinning out towards the edges ; traces of it however,
were met with three hundred yards to the S. E., in loose pieces
on the surface. The yield of the specimens taken from the de-
posit is in peroxyd 30 per cent.

Mr. Murray met ^vith indications of the ore in the Seignory
of Ste. Anne, about three quarters of a mile from the Church, in
the bearing S. 54 E. mag. The indications appeared to be con-
fined to a patch of cultivated ground, covered at the time of
examination with standing grain, rendering it inexpedient to
follow them out ; no traces were observed either on the one
side or the other of the field. Fragments of the ore picked up
on the surface, shew a thickness of a few inches, and on analysis
have been found to contain 38 per cent, of peroxyd.

Flagging Stones — On the fifth lot of the second range of
Inverness, in the occupation of J. Forbes, about the middle of
the north-east line, there occurs a band of talcose quartz slate,
which has been to a small extent quarried, and which, splitting
with facility into slabs down to the thickness to three inches,
would yield very excellent flagging of any size up to seven feet
by four ; the divisional planes are very even and regular, and
they display surfaces that would require little or no dressing.
The band is about twelve feet thick and the color of the slabs is
light gray with a tinge of green.

Roofing Slates. — On the fourteenth lot of the first range of
Halifax, there was observed a band of schistose rock, of which
a breadth of* about three yards Was exposed, deserving well to
be tried for roofing slate ; it is of a blueish gray color and splits
into laminae of one eighth of an inch and upwards in thickness,
The surface, instead of the earthy aspect which characterises
the best slates of Great Britain, possesses a dull gloss arising
from the presence of a small amount of talcose material. The
plates are firm but not brittle, and may be easily pierced and
dressed. It is probable that slates of any required size, from
twenty-five by eighteen inches to thirteen by seven inches, might
be obtained. The quality is almost precisely the same as that
of the quarry in Frampton, opened by Mr. M. Quigley about

eight years ago, of which specimens were then sent to the Board
of Works.

Mill Stones. — The granite met with in the vicinity of the ser-
pentine of the Guillamne, in the Seignory of Vaudreuil Beauce,
has been advantageously used for mill stones. Mr. Calway,
who for twenty years has occupied ihe mill on the Rivière des
Plantes, in the Seignory of St. Joseph, informed me that he had
for more than half the time applied the stone to such a purpose
in his mill, and that he considered it only a little inferior to
French burr. The rock appears to have a rather larger amount
of quartz than ordinary granite, and it is at the same time ex-
ceedingly tough ; the color is a very light gray, nearly approach-
ing white, its quartz and feldspar are very white and its mica
dark brown. It is not impossible that some of the conglomerate
beds of the green sandstones which lie a little both to the north-
west and south-east of the Rivière des Plantes, would also furnish
good material for mill stones. Judging from a specimen brought
me from the tenth lot of the eleventh range of Ham, a conglo-
merate bed there lying immediately near a band of calcareous
serpentine, which has already been mentioned, would probably
afford good native mill stones ; the pebbles of the conglomerate
are composed of white corneous quartz, and vary in size from a
quarter of an inch to two inches in diameter, and are very firmly
and thickly set in the matrix, which is not quite so hard as the
pebbles.

Peat. — For the valuable uses to which peat is applied, I beg
to refer to the remarks of Mr. Hunt, accompanying his analyses
of specimens from the deposit in the Seignory of St. Hyacinthe at
St. Dominique. In addition to this locality he mentions others in
the Seignories of Longueuil and Ste. Marie de Monnoir. It is also
met with in the Seignory of Rivière Quelle, where an extension
of it called La Plaine spreads over four thousand square acres*
Another deposit occurs in the Seignory of Rivière du Loup, the
breadth of which, on the Temiscouata road^is a mile and a quarter }
it occupies an area of about six thousand acres, and Mr*
Andrew Russel, in constructing the road over it, ascertained
its depth in some parts to be eighteen feet. I have been informed
of another locality in' the Townships of Matanne and M'Nider,

between the rivers Blanche and Matanne, but with its extent Î
am as yet unacquainted. A patch of a hundred acres occurs
on the left bank of the Madawaska River, opposite to Mr.
J. Walsh's farm, just above the twelfth mile post on the road to
Little Falls.

Catalogue of Economic Minerals. — Desirous that as many as
possible of the materials to be found associated with the rocks
and deposits of the Province, and capable of useful application,
should be represented at the Grand Industrial Exhibition to take
place in London in the beginning of May 1851, a Catalogue of
such as are known to me, with their localities, has been prepared
with a view to promote by its circulation, a collection of such spe-
cimens as may be worthy of transmission to England, and con-
sidering that the document may tend to assist in diffusing a
knowledge of the mineral resources of the country, a copy of it is
appended to this Report. The chief part of the localities given
are derived from the personal knowledge of myself and those
associated with me in the Survey ; there being however seve-
ral districts w^hich have not yet been examined, I have depended
for some sources upon information obtained from others.
I have the honor to be,

Your Excellency's most obedient servant,

W. E. LOGAN.

REPORT

T. S. HUNT, ESQ., CHEMIST AND MINERALOGIST

TO THE

PROVINCIAL GEOLOGICAL SURVEY,

ADDRESSED TO

W. E. LOGAN, ESQ., PROVINCIAL GEOLOGIST.

Laboratory of the Geological Survey,
Montreal, 1^^ May, 1850.

Sir.

After having accompanied you during a part of the season,
in your explorations along the St. Francis and Chaudière Rivers,
I proceeded in the month of September to the w^estern portion of
the Province, w^ith a view to some chemico-agricultural inves-
tigations, in accordance w^ith the design expressed in the Act
for the Geological Survey, which provides for the examination
of the soils of the country. My plan was to visit different
districts, and collect from them specimens of such soils as I
judged to be representatives of the neighborhood, selecting
generally such as had never been cultivated, that I might ascer-
tain their constitution when neither enriched by manures nor
exhausted by long tillage. For the sake of comparison however
I not unfrequently took specimens from lands which had been
impoverished by long culture. In connection with the samples
of soils, it was also deemed important to collect, as far as could
be obtained from the cultivators, information as to the character
and capabilities of the soil for the different plants, the succession
of crops and plan of farming pursued, and the manures, if any,
which had been employed, with the effects observed.

In the course of my journey, I collected specimens from
Woodhill near Hamilton, the residence of the Hon. Adam Fer-
gusson, from the vicinity of Brantford, of Woodstock, Zorra,
Oxford, London, Lobo, Chatham, Raleigh, Niagara, and Port
Dalhousie, amounting in all to twenty samples.

After my return to Montreal I made an excursion along the
River Richelieu, that I might have an opportunity of examin-
ing some of the soils of its valley. I also visited St. Hyacinthe
and some places in its vicinity, and examined the valuable depo-
sit of peat which is found in the adjoining parishes. The
number of specimens of soils collected on this tour was also
about twenty, making an aggregate of forty in all. To the
analysis of these, I have given my attention during the past
winter.

As I had foreseen while making the collections, the number of
specimens obtained was far greater than could be properly
examined by a single chemist laboring without an assis'tant, in
the time allotted previous to making the Annual Report. I have
however been able to complete the analysis of eighteen, the
results of which I beg leave to submit to you, reserving the
others for a future Report.

Collection of the Soils, and plan of Analysis, — The specimens
intended to represent the surface soil, were generally taken from
a depth of about six inches, and the sub-soils unless otherwise
specified, at a depth of about sixteen or eighteen inches. Care
was taken to have them a fair average of the fields, an end which
was often attained by mixing samples from several different
parts.

In arranging the plan of analysis, reference was had to the
determination of those substances only, which are considered of
importance to the vegetable economy. In order that my inves-
tigations should be of the greatest use, it was thought proper on
the one hand, to neglect the examination of the different forms
of organic matter in the soil, and some other questions, which
although of scientific interest, would have greatly prolonged the
labor, and have rendered the number of analyses completed much
less, without adding materially to their value ; and on the other
hand to determine with accuracy, the proportions of those ingre-

dients upon which, although present in comparatively minute
quantities, may often depend the barrenness or fertility of a soil.
It is for this reason important that these ingredients should be
determined with exactitude, as analyses of soils conducted in the
manner of those which we find described, and for which pro-
cesses are laid down in popular works on agricultural chemistry,
are often of little value to the scientific agriculturist.

In the course of the analyses which follow, I have given first,
a partially mechanical analysis, in which the amounts of clay
and sand have been estimated by carefully washing a weighed
quantity of the soil, and determining the weight of the portion
which was not carried ofi" by the water. The moisture present
in the soil was ascertained by exposing it to a temperature of
300 F., until it no longer lost weight, and the organic matter,
if present in any considerable amount, by the subsequent loss in
ignition. In the case of clay soils, which retain a portion of
water at the temperature used in drying, but lose it by a red
heat, the loss representing the amount of organic matter, is of
course augmented by a portion of water. Clays however sel-
dom contain much organic matter, and when it is present in
such a quantity as to make its determination a question of inte-
rest, I have carried the previous process of dessication as far as
could be done without carbonization. In reference to the amount
of moisture, it is to be remarked, that the soils had been pre-
viously dried by exposure to the air in a warm room.

In determining the mineral ingredients, I have deemed it suf-
ficient to examine those which the soil yields to the action of
hydrochloric acid by the aid of heat ; those elements which are
so combined as to resist the action of this agent, riiay be con-
sidered as not actually available to the purposes of vegetable
life, although serving as a magazine of vegetable aliment to be
slowly set free by the disintegrating forces constantly in opera-
tion.

The process adopted was briefly as follows : twenty granmies of
the^soil were taken in fine powder, and if the amount of organic
matter was considerable, having been sometimes ignited, were
digested for an hour at a boiling heat, with pure hydrochloric
acid diluted with three or four parts of distilled water. The

solution being filtered, and the residue carefully washed, the
liquid obtained was measured and divided into three equal
parts. One of these was evaporated to complete dryness, and
when the residue was dissolved in water with the addition of a
little hydrochloric acid, left behind a portion of silica which had
previously been in solution, and which was estimated. The
liquid was then mixed with an excess of a solution of caustic
baryta which precipitated any sulphates and phosphates, and all
the earthy bases except lime, which together with the excess of
baryta being separated by carbonate of ammonia, the solution
was evaporated to dryness and the ammoniacal salts being ex-
pelled by heat, the alkaline chlorids remained behind ; after
weighing them, the respective amounts of potassium and sodium
were determined by combining the chlorids with chlorid of pla-
tinum, and separating the potassium from the sodium salt by
means of alcohol, in which the former is insoluble.

A second measure of the solution was mixed with a solution
of chlorid of barium, and after heating and a repose of some
hours, the precipitate of sulphate of barj^a, often very small, was
collected on a filter, and washed with a dilute solution of sal am-
moniac, after which it was ignited and weighed. In the filtrate
from this, the iron, alumina and manganese could be determined
by the usual processes.

The third portion was employed for the determination of the
phosphoric acid; notwithstanding the importance attached
to a correct estimation of this element, our processes hitherto
have been confessedly very imperfect. In the soil it is always
associated with lime, magnesia, iron, and alumina, and the
separation of it from these bases, especially the last, has always
been a very difficult problem, which has engaged the attention
of many skilful chemists, who have from time to time, proposed
processes to this end, which have however, subsequently been
found on thorough examination to be objectionable and unable
to aflford reliable results. It was therefore not without hesita-
tion that I undertook this difficult matter, nor was it until after
many unsuccessful trials, that I at last succeeded in obtaining
results satisfactory to myself. I was then agreeably surprised,
when a few weeks after, I received through the foreign journals.

a memoir by the distinguished analytical chemist, H. Rose, of Ber-
lin, in which, after a thorough examination of the subject, he pro-
poses a process for the determination of phosphoric acid in soils,
identical in principle with my own. Having premised this much,
I proceed to describe briefly my process, which depends upon
principles already well known to chemists, and has .nothing new
except the application of facts previously made known by Rose
and Berzelius.

It is based in the first place, upon the fact that in the pre-
sence of a great excess of a persalt of iron,the addition of ammonia
precipitates the whole of the phosphoric acid in combination with
the peroxyd of iron. The acid hydrochloric solution is heated
to ebullition, a few crystals of chlorate of potash added, and the
whole boiled for some minutes ; the object of this being to de-
stroy any organic matter which may interfere with the complete
precipitation of the alumina and iron, and to peroxydize the
latter. Sal ammoniac is then added if the solution is not strongly
acid, and caustic ammonia in slight excess. The mixture
is digested for a few minutes, filtered while hot, carefully ex-
cluding the air, and the precipitate is washed with recently
boiled water ; the object of these precautions being to prevent
the formation of carbonate of lime from the carbonic acid of the
atmosphere. As the precipitated peroxyd of iron and alumina
always carry down with them a trace of magnesia, which in a
subsequent stage of the process, would be liable to vitiate the re-
sults, the precipitate should be redissolved in hydrochloric acid, and
again precipitated with the addition of sal ammoniac, by a slight
excess of ammonia. It is thoroughly washed and dried, and then
consists of the alumina and peroxyd, with the whole of the
phosphoric acid of the original solution. To separate this,
it is pulverized, carefully levigated and intimately mixed with
four parts of carbonate of soda and about two-thirds of its weight
of pure silica. The mixture is then introduced into a platinum
crucible, which is enclosed in one of clay, and the whole intense-
ly heated for about an hour, in a furnace. It is essential that
the heat be sufficient for a complete fusion ; by this process the
alumina and iron are converted into silicates, and the phospho-
ric acid is obtained combined with the soda ; the mass which

is generally green from a trace of manganese, is dissolved in
water, carbonate of ammonia is then added, and the mixture
digested for a little time to separate a portion of dissolved silica.
The filtered liquor is then concentrated by evaporation, the
excess of carbonate of soda neutralized by hydrochloric acid,
and the solution again made alkaline by caustic ammonia.
From this liquid the phosphate is precipitated with the usual
precautions, by a salt of magnesia with the addition of a little
sal ammoniac, as the phosphate of magnesia and ammonia, from
the weight of which when ignited, the amount of phosphoric
acid is calculated. This process is quite easy of execution,
and has aiforded me very satisfactory results.

The solutions which have been filtered from the precipitate of
oxyd of iron, alumina and phosphates, contain the whole of the
lime and magnesia of the soil ; these bases are determined in the
usual manner, the lime by precipitation as an oxalate, and the
magnesia as ammonio-phosphate.

The amount of chlorine was determined by boiling a portion
of the soil with distilled water, carefully filtering the liquid and
precipitating by a solution of nitrate of silver. In the following
analyses it has as yet been determined only in a few instances ;
in the others it yet remains to be added, but the results as being
otherwise complete are presented. The amount of manganese
was found to be exceedingly minute in the clay soils, although
never absent, and as it is not regarded as performing any part in
the nutrition of plants, its quantity has not generally been deter*
mined. The iron in all soils exists in part as protoxyd and
part as peroxyd ; it has been determined as peroxyd in the anal-
yses. The phosphoric and sulphuric acids are given without any
attempt to combine them ; the latter is to be regarded as com-
bined with the alkalies, and with lime forming gypsum, while
for the phosphoric acid we have often no satisfactory means of
deciding whether it is to be regarded as combined with lime or
magnesia, with iron or alumina ; fortunately this is a question
of little or no practical importance, for we are aware that plants
have the power of decomposing and recomposing the compounds
presented to their roots, to form those salts which are best adapted
to their economy.

SOILS FROM CANADA EAST.

St. Charles. — In their virgin state, the lands of this Seignory
consist principally of a light grayish or yellowish clay with
reddish stains, often more or less mixed with sand and overlaid with
a light black vegetable mould, averaging perhaps ten or twelve
inches in thickness. The original growth was of hard wood,
maple, elm and birch, except upon small ridges of gravel occa-
sionally met with, which are clothed with resinous trees. By
tillage the soil gradually loses its blackness, partly from the
decomposition of the vegetable matter, and partly from the inter-
mixture of the inferior clay. Many of the farms have been
cropped with wheat for thirty or forty years almost without
alternation or fallowing, and owing to this, and to the ravages of
the fly, have for a few years past yielded but comparatively
inadequate returns. They produce however good crops of peas
and oats, and the cultivation of timothy and clover has of late
years been found very successful.

From this Seignory I selected three samples of the soil. The
black mould at eight inches from the surface, No. 1 ; the underly-
ing clay at eighteen inches. No. 2 ; these two are from the domain
of the Seignor, Mr. Kierzkowski, about four acres from the river?
and near the parish church ; and a third from a long tilled
field not far distant, the property of Dr. Leprohon ; of these but
the first two have as yet been analyzed.

No. 1 consists of,

Sand.
Clay,

49.2
23.4
20.8
6.6

Vegetable matter
Water

100.0

100 parts of this soil gave to hydrochloric acid :

Alumina ,

Oxyd of Iron

4.820
3.240
1.033
.749
.435
.795
.080
.144
.557
.075

Magnesia, } ^ P^^' ^« ^^^-bonates. |

Potash

Soda

Chlorine

Sulphuric Acid ..
Phosphoric Acid
Soluble Silica

100 parts of this soil gave to distilled water .786 of soluble
matter, principally organic ; by ignition it left .104 of an alka-
line ash ; it contained .008 of chlorine, a small portion of nitrates
and a trace of sulphates. The bases were alkalies, lime and
magnesia.

No. 2. This contains but a trace of vegetable matter, and con-

sists of

Sand 56.0

Pebbles 8 0

Clay 27.8

Water 8.2

100.0

The sand of this as well as the previous soil is silicious
with occasional grains of feldspar ; the pebbles are apparently
gnessoidand quartzose.

100 parts yielded :

Alumina 1.440

Oxyd of Iron 3.780

Lime 650

Magnesia 1.036

Potash 276

Soda 340

Chlorine 134

Sulphuric Acid 034

Phosphoric Acid .215

Soluble Silica 150

100 parts of this soil yielded to water, .0506 of solid
matter, which by ignition was reduced to. 0347 ; it contained. 01 34
of chlorine .00046 of sulphuric acid, and .0085 of lime, besides
magnesia and alkalies ; no trace of nitrates was detected.

St. Hilaiix. — The clays which I saw in this Seignory seem
much like those of St. Charles, but with a smaller admixture of
sand. Around the base of the mountain the debris of the
decomposing trap, has made a band of gravelly earth well fitted
for fruit and for those crops which require a light warm soil.
The compact texture of these very heavy clays, washed by the
waters flowing from the hill side, is such as to require thorough
subsoil draining, which has been effected in an admirable man-

ner by the proprietor, Major Campbell, to whose kind courtesy
I am much indebted, and whose enlightened efforts are making
his farm a model to the district. Thus drained, the clays are
found to yield excellent crops of wheat and clover, with peas.

Upon the farm of Major Campbell, the original layer of vege-
table mould has by long tillage entirely disappeared ; the general
character of the clay seems to be nearly the same for a depth
of five or six feet, except that it is a little lighter on going
down, a difference perhaps due to the fact that organic matters
from the surface have not infiltrated thus far. • When brought to
the surface it breaks into hard angular fragments, but by the in-
fluence of the weather it crumbles down into a comparatively
mellow soil, still however becoming hard and dry in the heat of
summer. In laying out the railroad, a bank of the clay was
cut down and uncovered in many parts to a depth of six feet.
The surface thus exposed was entirely free from any organic
matter, but was found after a dressing of plaster, to yield an
excellent crop of peas ; this manure has been used with great
success by the proprietor for peas and clover, upon the clays
generally.

Two specimens of the soil were selected from a field near
the bank of the river, and not far from the residence of Major
Campbell. This land had been for some time under tillage, and
was in good condition ; one portion was taken at a depth of
about six inches, No. 3 ; and one from a ditch at thirty inches,
No. 4.

No. 3 gave by washing, a small portion of white sand, com-
posed of quartz and feldspar ; it contained but very littte organic
matter.

Sand

Clay

Water and vegetable matter.

3.0
89.7
7.3

100.0

100 parts of it yielded:

Alumina 12.420

Oxyd of Iron 7.320

Lirae 697

Magnesia 1.490

Potash 591

Soda 231

Phosphoric Acid .390

Sulphuric Acid .022

Soluble Silica 105

No. 4. This clay contains but traces of sand and organic
matter. It loses by ignition 15.5 per cent of water.

f 100 parts of it yield:

Alumina 4.380

Oxyd of Iron 6.245

Lime .980

Magnesia 1.080

Potash .753

Soda 355

Phosphoric Acid .474

Sulphuric Acid .024

Soluble Silica 210

Chamhly. — The soils of this Seignory are principally of a reddish
clay, which when exposed to the air, readily falls down into a
mellow granular soil. In the places where I had an opportunity
of observing, it is underlaid at the depth of three or four feet by
an exceedingly tenacious blue clay which breaks into angular
fragments, and resists the action of the weather. The upper
clays constitute the wheat bearing soils, and were originally
covered with a growth of maple, elm, and birch ; distinguished
from them by its covering of soft woods, principally pine and
tamarack, is a gravelly ridge, which near the church is met with
about fourteen acres from the river ; it is thickly strewn with
gneiss and syenite boulders much worn and rounded. The
soil is very light and stony, but yields good crops of maize and
potatoes, by manuring.

The extraordinary fertility of the clay is indicated by the
fact that there are fields which have, as I was assured by the

proprietors, yielded successive crops of wheat for thirty and forty
years, without manure and almost without any alternation.
They are now considered as exhausted, and incapable of yielding
a return, unless carefully manured ; and such, for the last fifteen
or twenty years, have been the ravages of the Hessian fly upon
the wheat, which is the staple crop, that the inducements to the
improvement of their lands have been very small ; so that the
Richelieu valley, once the granary of the Lower Province, has
for many years scarcely furnished any wheat for exportation.
But the insect, which for the last three or four years has been
gradually disappearing, was last season almost unknown, and the
crops of wheat surpassed any for the last ten or twelve years.
With the encouragement inspired by the departure of this
scourge, we may hope that more attention will be given to the
subject, and that improved systems of cultivation may restore to
fertility those exhausted soils, and enable this once productive
valley to regain its former character.

Of a number of soils collected at Chambly, only three have as
yet been submitted to analysis ; they are — one of the reddish clay
taken from a depth of sixteen inches, from a field in good con-
dition, and considered as identical in character with the surface
soil before tillage, No. 5 ; and one at a depth of six inches, from a
field closely adjoining, but exhausted by having yielded crops of
wheat for many successive years without receiving any manure.
No. 6 ; the latter supported a scanty growth of a short thin wiry
grass, which is regarded as indicative of an impoverished soil,
and known as herhe à cheval ; both were from the farm of Mr.
Bunker ; the third. No. 7, is a specimen of the gravelly loam
above mentioned, from an untilled field upon the farm of Mr.
Yule, who very kindly assisted me in my examinations.

No. 5 contained a small amount of silicious sand and traces
of organic matter, and gave 5.5 per cent of water.
, 100 parts of it yielded:

Alumina 3,300

Oxyd of Iron 8.680

Manganese ,160

Lime , .711

Magnesia 2.310

Potash 536

Soda 340

Phosphoric Acid .418

Sulphuric Acid 020

Soluble Silica 180

No. 6 consists of —

Silicious sand with a little feldspar 9.0

Clay 79.2

Vegetable matter 6.8

Water 5.0

100.0

100 parts gave —

Alumina not determined.

Oxyd of Iron 4.560

Lime 347

Magnesia 888

loTM •

Phosphoric Acid 126

Sulphuric Acid 031

Soluble Silica 080

By the action of water, a solution containing minute traces
of chlorids and sulphates of lime, magnesia, and alkalies is ob-
tained. 100 parts of the soil give in this way, of chlorine, .0013 ;
sulphuric acid, .0005.

No. 7. This soil contained about 20 per cent of pebbles, and
12 of coarse gravel ; that portion which passed through the
seive consisted of —

Gravel 75.0

Clay 13.7

Vegetable matter 6.1

Water 5.2

100.0

The soil was very red, and the sand silicious and quite ferru-
ginous, consisting of the disintegrated syenitic rocks which make
up the coarser portions.

100 parts gave —

Alumina

Oxyd of Iron....

Lime

Magnesia ,

Potash

Soda

Phosphoric Acid
Sulphuric Acid .
Soluble Silica....

2.935
5.505
.156
.409
.109
.144
.220
.018
.080

St. Dominique. — The savanne of St. Dominique and the re-
claimed lands in its vicinity, present many things of interest,
and being at St. Hyacinthe, I availed myself of the opportunity
and the politeness of Dr. Bouthillier, who accompanied me to visit
the locality. It consists of a large peat bog, which extends
through the parish of St. Dominique, and parts of St. Rosalie and
St. Pie, a tract perhaps five or six miles in one direction, by three
or four in the other. This extent is covered by a layer of peat
which from a depth of two or three feet at the edges, is six feet
in many places, and in some parts is said to be even eighteen
feet in depth. It supports in some parts, a growth of tamarack
and is covered with sphagnous mosses, with many beautiful
plants of the Orchideae and Ericaceae. It rests upon a tough
blue clay containing a considerable portion of silicious sand,
mixed with brilliant scales of mica, and presents occasionally
the impression of marsh plants and small shells.

Since the settlement of the vicinity, large portions of this
savanne have been reclaimed to the purposes of agriculture. A
large drain of considerable length was some years since cut
down to the clay, thus effecting a partial draining of a large
portion of the marsh. The drained land being first cleared of the
trees, is ploughed, and then in the dry weather of summer, set on
fire. In this way eight or ten inches of the peat are burned,
leaving a thin layer of a very fine light reddish ash upon the
surface. This serves as a powerful manure, and the peat will
then yield one or two fine crops of barley or oats ; the straw
attains an astonishing size and strength, and the grain is equally
very superior. The burned soil produces also fine potatoes and
turnips ; but after two years it is found to be quite exhausted,

and requires to be again burned to render it productive. When
by many repetitions of this process, the peat has been burned
down to within a few inches of the clay, the two are mixed by
deep plowing, and a rich mellow soil is obtained, which is
unsurpassed for wheat, and yields at the same time fine Indian
corn, peas and grass. Such are many of the reclaimed lands
of the side of the savanne near to St. Hyacinthe, where from an
original peat of four or five feet, the finest farms have been made,
yielding rich timothy and clover, alternating with wheat and
peas, — a system which is now very generally adopted in the
vicinity. There are liow^ever, some fields that have been tilled
for a long period of years, without manuring, and almost without
any alternation, which are now quite worn out.

I collected for examination, a mass of the peat from a depth
of five feet, No. 8 ; a specimen of the underlying clay. No. 9 ;
and some of a long tilled and nearly exhausted field, not far
from the present border of the savanne, No. 10.

The peat retains distinctly the forms of the mosses, and shows
equally the remains of Equiseta and other larger marsh plants
intermixed. When heated in a close vessel, it evolves a large
quantity of gas burning with a brilliant flame, and gives a com-
pact coke, which when ignited in the air, leaves a light reddish
white ash.

A thoroughly dried specimen gave the following for its com-
position ; —

Fixed Carbon 29.57

Ashes 6.75

Volatile matter 63.68

100 00

Another specimen of more compact turf from the vicinity
gave—

Fixed Carbon 29.30

Ashes 7.27

Volatile matter 63.43

100.00

As the composition of the mineral portions was in an agri-
cultural point of view, of much importance, I proceeded to mak(<
an analysis of the ash ; the specimen of peat taken for this pur-
pose, gave 6.58 per cent.

A watery solution of the ash contained chlorine and sulphuric
acid combined with potash and soda, and a large amount of sul-
phate of lime. The whole of the alkaline salts were dissolved
by the water. The ash was strongly alkaline in its reactions,
and contained as might be expected, the magnesia and some of
the lime in a free state. 100 parts of it gave me :

Lime 47.040

Magnesia 3.150

Peroxyd of Iron 4-680

Alumina 2.440

Ox^'d of Manganese .040

Potash 330

Soda 254

Chlorine 247

Sulphuric Acid 9.175

Phosphoric Acid 932

Carbonic Acid 23.060

Silica 4.920

Sand (mechanically present) 4.040

These ingredients combined in the usual manner, will give

the following compounds for 1 00 parts :

Carbonate of Lime 52.410

Lime ) . . ( 10.431

, hin part as sihcates i „ ,

Magnesia 3 * ( 3.150

Peroxyd of L'on 4.680

Alumina 2.440

Oxyd of Manganese .040

Phosphate of Lime 2.019

Sulphate of Lime (gypsum) 15.085

Sulphate of Potash 605

Sulphate of Soda 076

Chlorid of Sodium 412

Silica , 4.920

Sand 4.040

100,308

The clay No. 9 left by washing, a portion of silicious sand
with a little feldspar and mica. It consists of :

Sand 38.0

Clay 59.0

Water 3.0

100.0

ÎOO parts of it gave —

Alumina 4.520

Oxyd of Iron 6.440

Lime «717

Magnesia 1.122

Potash 158

Soda 340

Phosphoric Acid 152

Sulphuric Acid 017

The exhausted soil No. 10, consists of —

Sand 46.0

Clay 42.2

Vegetable matter 9.5

Water 2.3

100.0

100 parts of it gave —

Alumina 3.675

Oxyd of Iron 4.560

Lime (in part as carbonate) 1.008

Magnesia .687

Potash 189

Soda 255

Sulphuric Acid 102

Phosphoric Acid 342

Soluble Silica 270

It will be at once seen from the composition of the peat ash,
that it is a powerful fertilizer ; it contains more than two per cent,
of phosphate of lime or bone earth, more than fifteen per cent, of
gypsum, besides the alkaline sulphates and chlorids, carbonates
and silicates of lime and magnesia, all substances eminently
conducive to the growth of plants. More than sixteen per cent, of
it is soluble in water, and the rest is in such a minutely divided
state, that it is soon removed from the surface of the porous peat,
being drained off by the atmospheric waters ; hence the rapid
deterioration of the fertife soil which is obtained by burning the
surface ; once however reduced so near to the clay as to be
mixed with it by ploughing, the ashes are retained, and enrich
very much the clay subsoiL

The analysis of No. 10 was executed upon a specimen which
had been ignited to destroy the intermixed organic matter, which
makes up about one tenth of the soil, and consists of yet unde-
composed peat. Hence notwithstanding its impoverished con-
dition, we find still a considerable proportion of phosphates and
sulphates with some carbonate of lime ; these are however en-
closed by the vegetable matter, in such a way as not to be ac-
cessible to the plant. To show more correctly the actual com-
position of this soil as adapted to the purposes of vegetation, it
will be necessary to make another analysis, upon a portion in
which the mineral ingredients of the peat have not been set at
liberty by burning.

In the plan commonly pursued for burning the peat, a great
part of the ash is dissolved or washed away, and lost to the soil.
If it were removed and employed as a manure upon other
soils where it could be mixed by ploughing with the clay, last-
ing beneficial effects would no doubt be produced, which would
make it well worthy the attention of farmers.

St Hyacinthe. — Last fall, through the politeness of the Hon.
A. N. Morin, I received two specimens of soils said to be from
about two miles south of the village. They were described as
follows : — "Blue Clay which has been tilled sixty or seventy
years, and never manured," No. 1 1 ; and " Blue Clay from the
same field, at the depth of one and a half to two feet." No. 12.

No. 1 1 contained a considerable portion of sand, and a little
vegetable matter. Its composition is

Sand 34.0

Clay 62.2

Vegetable matter 15

Water 2.3

100.0

100 parts of it gave

Alumina 2.200

Oxyd of Iron 5.860

Lime 756

Magnesia 1.024

Potash 450

Soda 630

Phosphoric Acid 189

Sulphuric Acid 018

Soluble Silica 135

No 12 is a pure clay, and contains no organic matter ; by
ignition it loses four per cent, of water. It effervesces slightly
with acids from the presence of carbonates.

100 parts of it gave

Alumina 5.200

Oxyd of Iron 6.840

Lime ) . u ) 2 625

. I m part as carbonates f
Magnesia... > ^ 3 2. 647

Potash 723

Soda 380

Phosphoric Acid 252

Sulphuric Acid 006

Soluble Silica 210

This soil evidently possesses the elements of fertility, but its
mechanical composition shows that it is entirely different from
No. 11, and consequently that the two are not valuable for the
purposes of comparison ; indeed I have not as yet been able to
learn the position or depth from which the latter was taken.

SOILS FROk CANADA WEST.

When at Brantford, I had occasion to examine an interesting
tract of land upon the Grand River. It consists in its original
state of fine open plains, somewhat elevated, and may be defined
as extending from Gait down the river for about eighteen miles.
These plains support a fine growth of oak remarkably free from
underwood, and are known by the name of " oak openings.'
The soil is a sandy loam very uniform in its character, which
at a depth generally of from two to six feet, is underlaid by a
coarse gravel, thus affording a natural drainage. The crops of
wheat obtained upon these lands are excellent, but wheat is sel-
dom sown for two successive years ; the fall grain is generally
followed by a spring crop, and the field then sown down with
grass or clover, and pastured for one or two years.

Potatoes and root crops, as beets and turnips, succeed equally
well upon these plains, which under a careful system of rota-
tion are very productive ; but it may be remarked that they would
never endure the systems of tillage which are practised upon
the heavy clay lands of the valleys of the Richelieu and
the Thames. Besides the ordinary manure of the farm-yard,

gypsum, which is found in great abundance in this vicinity, is
very advantageously employed as a manure, especially for clover.

Along the banks of the river, at a lovrer level than the oak
openings, are fine alluvial fiats of a rich heavy mould, covered
in their natural state with a thick heavy growth, principally of
elm, beech and maple. The soil of these flats is scarcely adapted
to wheat, which grows too luxuriantly, and is apt to suffer from
rust, but it produces abundantly all the other crops of the up-
land.

Of the specimens illustrating the composition of these soils, the
analyses of two are subjoined, which were collected at Strath-
more, the residence of Major Burroughs, near Brantford. No. 13
is from the oak plains, and is the loam from an untilled and re-
cently cleared field, taken from under a sod at the depth of eight
inches. No. 14 is the black loam from the flats, taken under
similar circumstances. A large proportion of No. 13 is very
finely divided and readily washes away, but still is not of such
a nature as^to give to the soil the character of a clay.

The gravel is partly quartzose and partly argillo-ferruginous,
as if derived from some decomposing sedimentary rock.

It consists of

Sand 47.4

Finer material 49-2

Organic matter 2.4

Water 1.0

100.0

100 parts of it gave

Alumina 2 090

Oxydoflron 2.520

Lime 310

Magnesia 456

Potash 105

Soda 060

Phosphoric Acid 380

Sulphuric Acid 008

Soluble Silica 060

The black loam, No. 14 is slightly calcareous ; it consists of

Sand 72.0

Finer material 20.0

Vegetable matter 6.5

Water ].5

100.0

100 parts of it gave

Alumina

Oxyd of Iron

Lime (as carbonate and sulphate)....

Magnesia (as carbonate in part)

Potash

Soda

Phosphoric Acid

Sulphuric Acid ( =.158 of Gypsum)
Soluble Silica

.915
2.415
5.200
3,460
.162
.190
.303
.093
.225

The examination of an interesting series of specimens which
I collected while in the vicinity of Chatham, Western District
is as yet unfinished. The rich alluvial flats of the valley of the
Thames extend from the north branch of Bear Creek, on the
north, to near Lake Erie on the south, constituting a large por-
tion of the western peninsula. The land is quite level, and re-
quires draining to make it fit for successful culture. The soil
may be described as a rich black mould, which along the Thames
is from six to ten inches deep, but near Bear Creek is said to be
very much thicker.

This at the places where I examined it upon the banlis of
the Thames, rests upon a yellowish or grayish clay, often con-
taining abundance of small shells, which by exposure to the air
darkens and crumbles down into a mellow granular soil. In
some sections seen near to the village of Chatham, this clay was
about four feet in thickness, and was underlaid by a more or less
sandy loam, regularly stratified, while beneath at about ten feet
from the surface, appeared a tenacious blue clay. The ordinary
tillage rarely brings up the lighter colored subsoil, but a plan of
deep ploughing has been lately adopted by some of the farmers
with excellent results. The wheat sown upon the black mould
grows too luxuriantly, and is disposed to rust, tendencies
which are arrested by an admixture of the clay. There are
fields near the river in the Township of Raleigh , which I was
well assured had been cropped with wheat for thirty or forty
years, without manuring, and with very little attention to crops
or fallowing, and yet these still yield very fair returns. Upon
the best conditioned lands thirty-eight to forty, and even forty-

two bushels of wheat to the acre, are obtained in good seasons.
Hemp has recently been tried with much success.

The newly cleared lands are frequently first sown with
Indian corn, which grows luxuriantly, and preferring as it does a
light open soil, succeeds perfectly well in the richest moulds.
The crops of oats and barley are also very fine, potatoes suc-
ceed well, and mangel wurtzel and carrots arc beginning to be
cultivated for the feeding of stock. The evil of rust is often se-
verely felt upon the wheat crop ; the fall sown grain however,
suffers less from it than the spring wheat. Sifthig lime over
the field while the grain is yet in the milk is said to have been
found useful in preventing this disease, and I was informed by
a gentleman interested in agriculture, that a plan which has
been tried in very rich soils is to sow a much larger portion
than usual of grain to the acre. The result of this is, that the
plant becomes checked in its otherwise luxuriant growth, and
ripening more rapidly, escapes the rust. The yield is not what
would be obtained in proper soils with much less grain, but it
yields crops of wheat where other means have proved unsuc-
cessful in the Townships of Zone, Dover and elsewhere, and is
recorded rather as a fact of interest than an example for general
adoption. Draining and subsoil ploughing, where the clay can
be brought to the surface, will be found the remedies most
efficacious.

Such is the fertility of the soils in this region that but little need
has hitherto been felt of a system of rotation in crops ; some
however have begun to adopt it, and have commenced the cul-
tivation of clover, which grows finely, especially with a dress-
ing of plaster, which is used to some extent.

The natural growth of these lands is oak, elm, with black
walnut and white wood trees of enormous size ; the black wal-
nut timber is already becoming a considéra!. In article of export.
Fine groves of sugar maple are also met with, from which
large quantities of sugar are annually made.

I give here an analysis of a specimen of the black mould from
the seventh lot of the first range of Raleigh. The mould here is
eight or ten inches in thickness, and had been cleared of its wood,
and used six or eight years for pasture ; the specimen from a

depth of six inches contained but a trace of white silicioiis

sand.

No. 1 5. It consisted of — •

Clay 83.4

Vegetable matter 12.0

Water 46

100.0

100 parts of it gave —

Alumina 2620

Oxyd of Iron and a little Ox. Manganese 5.660

Lime 1 .500

Magnesia L060

Potash and Soda 825

Phosphoric Acid .400

Sulphuric Acid 108

Soluble Silica 290

The examination of the clay subsoil is yet to be made, as well
as the determination of some points of interest with regard to
No. 15.

Near to the mouth of the Thames, and skirting the borders
of Lake St. Clair, is an extensive prairie which is supposed to
cover about 30,000 acres. Commencing nearly behind Chatham,
it forms a belt three or four miles wide, which keeps the south side
of the Thames for about six miles ; here it comes upon the river,
and occupying both banks, extends down to the lake ; stretching
as far as the eye can reach in one vast plain, broken only here
and there by oases of forest, like small islands, dotting its sur-
face. These consist of a growth of soft maple, walnut and elm,
with occasional willows, which are seen springing up here and
there in little copses, with thorns. The plains are covered in
some places with a coarse sedge, and in others with a stout
jointed grass, which sometimes attains the height of three feet, and
makes good hay and pasturage for the half- wild poneys which
feed in great numbers upon these prairies.

In spring time the greater portion of this region is overflowed
with water from a few inches to two or three feet in depth.
The whole of the country to the south from the ridge near Lake
Erie, discharges its water upon this tract, and it is said that in
the spring time a current is perceptible across the whole sur-

face. In 1836-37 nearly the whole prairie was covered through-
out the year, a circumstance connected with the yet unexplained
change in the levels of the upper lakes.

The soil is a black unctuous mould from six to eighteen inches
or more in depth, with a subsoil composed of blueish or whitish
clay, which by exposure to the air readily disintegrates. It often
contains shells and fragments of wood, and an intelligent man
employed in ditching assured me that he had met with the end
of a canoe at the depth of eight feet in the heavy clay. About
2,000 acres of the prairie are under cultivation in the Township
of Raleigh, and from 6,000 to 7,000 more rise to a height of
about twelve feet above the lake, and might readily be drained.
Some parts of the eastern extremity are at present rarely sub-
merged, and present gentle undulations of gravelly loam, black
with vegetable remains.

The cultivation of wheat does not succeed well upon the
mould of the prairie ; the heaving of the soil injures the fall
sown, while the spring sown grain rarely escapes the rust.
Where however, the mould is so thin that deep plowing can be
made to bring up the clay, a good wheat soil may be obtained,
Indian corn, oats and barley succeed and grow luxuriantly, as
also many root crops. The last season, although the tillage of
these lands is not generally the best, the first prizes for these
products, offered by the County Agricultural Sociey, were gained
by crops raised upon the reclaimed prairie.

The cultivation of grass has hitherto been much neglected, as
the natural growth of the country serves for both hay and pas-
turage, but clover has been a few times tried and great crops
obtained. One fault of the soil is its exceeding richness in vege-
table matter ; it is probable that a judicious application of quick
lime would be found very useful. Specimens of the soil were
taken from a recently drained portion in the seventeenth lot of
the first range of Raleigh. The mould was here twelve inches
deep; a specimen of it at the depth of six inches, No. 16, and
one of the clay at twenty inches, were taken. The analysis of
the mould is subjoined ; it contains no sand, and consists of : —

Clay ,

Vegetable matter.
Water

80.9
13.6
5.5

100.0

1 00 parts previously ignited, gave :

Alumina 4 340

Oxyd of Iron 7.090

Lime (in part as carbonate) 1.580

Magnesia 1.030

Potash 855

Soda 240

Phosphoric Acid 320

Sulphuric Acid .155

Solublf^ Silica 380

An analysis of the soil before ignition, a determination of the
condition of the organic portion, and an examination of the sub-
soil, are yet to be made.

I have not spoken of my examinations of the soils in the
vicinity of Woodstock and Zorra, in the neighborhood of London
and Lobo, of Hamilton, and of St. Catherines and Port Dal-
housie, as the results are not yet completed, and must form part
of a future Report.

I may however here introduce the analyses of two interesting
calcareous clays from London and Niagara. That of London is
met with at a depth of five to ten feet, and is seen cropping out
upon the banks of the Thames, near the town ; wells have been
sunk in it thirty and forty feet. Mr. Hamilton of London, who had
submitted it to a partial analysis, has found it extremely benefi-
cial as a manure when applied to his garden. It has the texture
of a fine clay and is mixed w^ith limestone pebbles ; during
solution in hydrochloric acid it evolves a bituminous odor ; it
contains no sulphates.

No. 17. It consists of:

57.00

29.40

6.91

.39

Oxyd of Iron and Alumina...

4.40

1.90

100.00

* The composition of the phosphate of lime here represented, is that of
bone earth, of which thirteen parts correspond very exactly to six of anhydrous
phosphoric acid.

A similar clay to that of London is found in like circumstances
in Delaware and Mosa, and a specimen from Port Stanley was
found to be similar in constitution. For those soils which are
deficient in lime, it will be evidently extremely valuable, as it is
in composition a rich marl.

The second is a clay taken at a depth of eight inches from an
untilled field in the Township of Niagara, upon the ridge of
land or escarpment here formed by the Niagara limestones. It
contains three or four per cent, of silicious sand with mica, and
some calcareous pebbles.

No. 18, Analysis gives for its composition :

Insoluble in acids 58 00

Carbonate of Lime 15.30

Carbonate of Magnesia 7.68

Oxyd of Iron

Alumina V......... 13.50

Manganese, a trace 3

Alkalies .51

Phosphoric Acid .09

Moisture 4.70

99.78

It contained besides a small amount of sulphuric acid, which
was not determined.

I have refrained from speaking of the conclusions to be drawn
I'rom the preceding analyses, or the various theoretical deduc-
tions which might present themselves to the agricultural chemist,
because sufficiently complete investigations have not yet been
executed, to warrant me in generalizing. Some of the conse-
quences are however so obvious, as to suggest themselves to
every scientific agriculturist, and to the attention of such I
commend these results, as the first fruits of my labors on the soils
of Canada.

Peat. — I have already alluded to the peat of the Savanne of
St.Dominique, which from its abundance appears well worthy of
attention in an economic point of view. In a country like Lower
Canada where coal is wanting, and where wood is already
becoming in some parts scarce, the public attention must ere
long be turned to some other source of fuel. Among these we
have at home a very important one in the shape of our immense

deposits of peat. Besides the large area above alluded to, there is
an extensive deposit of a similar character w^hich appears on the
road between Longueuil and Chambly, and extends westw^ard
over a large tract ; another described as of large size is found
in the Seignory of Ste. Marie de Monnoir, and still another south
of Laprairie ; while the peat bogs on the south side of the Otta-
wa, and along the line of the Rideau Canal, which you have
alluded to in your Report upon the Ottawa, are of great and but
imperfectly known extent.

The value of peat as a fuel is almost unknown in this country,
but the amount of it consumed in the British Isles and in Conti-
nental Europe, shows that it is a product of great and increasing
importance. The amount of peat raised in France in 1845 was
420,000 tons, and its value 977,560 dollars ; the number of work-
men employed was nearly 40,000. Its price in the city of New
York,*where it is consumed in considerable quantity, is about
$4^ per ton. In addition to its use as a fuel in domestic ope-
rations, peat or the coke obtained in charring it, by a process
similar to that employed for the manufacture of wood charcoal
and mineral coke, is now successfully used to a large extent for
the manufacture of iron, in France, Sweden, Bohemia, Bavaria
and Wirtemberg ; the iron thus obtained is said to be of supe-
rior quality, and the peat coke is even preferred for the refining
of steel. Peat affords by distillation a brilliant gas for illumina-
tion, in a quantity as great as ordinary coal and entirely free
from those sulphurous compounds, which contaminate the gas
from the latter. In Ireland according to Sir Robert Kane, it is
in general use upon the steamers on the River Shannon, in the
midst of a coal bearing country, and is employed in mills and
factories for generating steam, to which from its flaming character
it is well fitted.

By a process recently patented in Great Britain, by which the
peat is condensed with the aid of^ strong hydraulic press to about
one third its bulk, a fuel is obtained more dense than oak wood,
which by charring yields a coke eminently combustible, and
heavier than wood charcoal ; it can be manufactured for twenty
shillings sterling per ton. The patentee, who is the managing
director of the Dublin Steam Navigation Company, prepares

also an artificial coal from peat, of which it is stated, as the
result of experiments made on the vessels of the Company, that
with ten hmidred weight, the same steam power is obtained as
with seventeen and a half hundred weight of pit coal ; thereby
saving thirty per cent, in the stowage of fuel.

For the above facts, which I have adduced in order to call
attention to the value of our own peat bogs, I have been indebted
to Mr. R. C. Taylor's late valuable work, " Statistics of Coal,"
and Sir Robert Kane on the Industrial Resourses of Ireland.

The late surprising statements of the O'Gorman Mahon, as to
the practicability of manufacturing oil, acids, wax, as well as
gas and coke from the peat of Ireland, do not appear as yet
sufficiently sustained by experiment to render them perfectly
satisfactory; although such products are undoubtedly to be
obtained by distillation of peat, it does not appear certain that
they can be made economically available.

The peat of our vicinity is of a very excellent quality, and
contains but a small portion of ashes ; according to compe-
tent judges who have seen it, it is equal to the best peats of
Ireland and Scotland. It shall be my endeavor to collect for
another year some statistics as to the extent of our deposits,
and to submit the different samples to examination in order to
determine their real and relative value as fuels.

In this connection I may allude to the asphaltum or mineral
pitch which is found on the nineteenth lot of the sixth or seventh
range of the Township of Enniskillen, Canada West ; attention
was first called to it by His Excellency Earl Cathcart, who gave
specimens of it to the Commission ; since then Mr. Wood, the
late member for Kent, has kindly sent a mass of more than one
hundred pounds weight. It is said to be spread over an area of
several acres, and from the speeimens received it is at least two
feet in thickness. Its consistence is about that of the variety
known as mineral caoutchouc. The consumption of this material
in England and on the Continent for the construction of pave-
ments, for paying the bottoms of vessels, and for the manu-
facture of illuminating gas, to which it is eminently adapted, is
such that the existence of deposits of it in this country is a mat-
ter of considerable importance. A careful examination of the

100

locality with regard to its extent, will be made during the en-
suing season. The specimens in my possession contain from
seventy-eight to eighty-one per cent, of combustible and volatile
matter.

MINERAL SPRINGS.

In my Report for 1847-8, 1 had occasion to describe the v^ell-
known Sour Spring of the vicinity of Brantford, which is re-
markable for containing a large amount of free sulphuric acid.
Since that time I have learned of the existence of several springs
of a similar nature in the same portion of the country. One of
these has been described by Dr. Mack of St. Catherines, in the
British American Journal for July, 1 849.

It is situated about a mile and a half above Chippewa, near
the Niagara River, and fills a small basin which has no visible out-
let. The water is described by Dr. Mack as intensely sour to the
taste, and strongly impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen. A
qualitative analysis shewed that the acid was the sulphuric, and
that no chlorine was present. Protosalts of iron, and small quanti-
ties of lime and magnesia were also detected. A specimen of
this water was kindly furnished me by Dr. Sutherland, by which
I was enabled to confirm the results of Dr. Mack, and to de-
tect a portion of alumina, thus completing its resemblance to
the water of Tuscarora, to which it seemed closely allied in the
proportion of free sulphuric acid. Dr. Chase of St. Catherines,
shewed me a specimen of water from a spring near to St. Davids,
which was similar in character to the above, but less strong.

Another interesting locality of acid water occurs in that vi-
cinity, which I had an opportunity of examining personally. It
is upon the S. W. corner lot of the Township of Niagara, upon
the land of Mr. McKinley, and near the margin of a small rivu-
let, which at the time (Oct. 1 5th) was dry, and showed in its bed,
at the depth of three or four feet from the surface, the red and
green variegated Medina sandstones of the region in place ; they
are covered by a tenacious yellow clay, in which the basin of
the spring is formed. It is nearly circular, between three and
four feet in diameter, and about thirty inches in depth. The
water rises to within six or eight inches of the surface, and has
no visible outlet ; its level is said to be nearly the same through-

101

out the year. It is kept in constant agitation by the escape of
considerable quantities of carburetted hydrogen gas, which
burns with a bright flame on contact with a light.

The soil is devoid of vegetation for a distance of six or eight
feet around the basin, yet there is a layer of black vegetable
matter a few inches in depth, which covers the surrounding soil
and extends to the very edge of the spring ; small maples are
growing near.

About twenty rods further up the stream, and at a level some
feet above the basin, near to the course of the rivulet, was a bed
of soft mud which had resulted from the drying up of a small
pool. In a depression a small accumulation of water was
found an inch or two in depth ; it was very sour to the taste,
and near it was a small hollow filled with a very acid mud, and
exhaling an odor of sulphuretted hydrogen. I was informed
that in summer, when the pool is quite dry, an inflammable gas
issues copiously through fissures in the clay.

I collected some bottles of the water from the basin, and have
since submitted it to a partial analysis. When recent, the water
has a decided flavor of sulphuretted hydrogen, the odor of which
is readily perceived in the vicinity of the spring. The water is
slightly turbid and yellowish, and does not become clear by re-
pose; its taste is styptic, and strongly acid. •

The specific gravity at 00° was found to be 1002.16 ; the usual
tests shew the presence in small quantities of lime, magnesia,
alumina, and protoxyd of iron ; the acid is the sulphuric, with-
out any trace of hydrochloric acid. When evaporated at a
gentle heat, the water leaves a moist residue, which blackens
from the presence of an organic substance which exists in con-
siderable quantity, and which has also been remarked in the
acid water of Tuscarora, and by Dr. Mack in that of Chippewa.
By ignition a residue was obtained of sulphates with oxyd of
iron and alumina, which in two determinations equalled .580
and .620 for 1000 of the water; the same quantity gave .074
of lime, equalito .180 of sulphate. The sulphuric acid v/as
found by two determinations to be 2.1308 and 2.1440, mean =
2.1376. Of this .106 are required to form gypsum with the .074
of lime, leaving 2.0316 of dry sulphuric acid, equal to 2.4887 of

102

oil of vitriol. The residue of the solid matters equalling .420,
and consisting in part of sulphates, would not correspond to the
decimal part of that quantity ; so that in round numbers the
water will contain two parts of hyd rated sulphuric acid in 1000.
At a future time I purpose to make a complete analysis of the
fixed ingredients of this spring.

It is interesting to remark, that this water collected in clean
bottles, was found at the end of some months to contain abun-
dance of small llocculi of an organic substance, which under the
microscope appeared to consist of groups of filaments, each
composed of a single chain of globular homogeneous and trans-
lucent vesicles of a yellow color. The existence and develop-
ment of vegetable life in a solution of sulphuric acid and sul-
phates of iron and alumina, appears somewhat curious and
worthy of record.

It is to be remarked in connection with the view suggested
by me in my Report for 1847-48, as to the ^^lation between these
springs and the gypseous deposits, that tne first ol those above
mentioned, like that of Tuscarora, rises from the gypsiferous rocks,
and that of Niagara from the upper portion of the Medina sand-
stones, to some portion of which formation the one nearest St.
Davids will also belong.

Providence Spring of St. Hyacinthe.

Two bottles of the water from this recently discovered spring-
were kindly furnished me by Dr. La Bruyère, and have been
submitted to a qualitative analysis. It contains a considerable
amount of mineral ingredients, 1000 parts yielding of salts dried
at 300° F., 5.16 parts. Evaporated to one-tenth the water is
strongly alkaline and saline to the taste ; it contains a consider-
able amount of alkaline chlorids, effervesces with nitric acid, and
gives with salts of baryta a copious precipitate, which is com-
pletely soluble in hydrochloric acid. Neutralized with acetic
acid and evaporated to dryness, the saline mass gives by the
ordinary tests, distinct reactions of bromine and iodine.

The precipitate which separates during the evaporation of the
water consists of the usual earthy carbonates, and a trace of iron ;
in addition to these the hydrochloric solution of the precipitate

103

gave by the addition of solution of gypsum, after some time, a
heavy precipitate indicating strontia. This spring then contains
chlorid with traces of bromid and iodid of sodium, carbonates of'
soda, lime and magnesia, with small portions of carbonate of
strontia and iron. It is interesting from the large portion of
alkaline carbonate which it contains, and deserves a quantitative
analysis.

Aurora Spring of Point du Jour,

This spring, the waters of which have recently been brought
into public notice, occurs in the Parish of L'Assomption. The
well is four or five feet in diameter and the water rises nearly
to the surface ; it is kept in constant ebullition by the escape of
volumes of carburetted hydrogen gas, and is slightly turbid from
a little suspended clay ; the supply is abundant. Owing to an
accident I was unable to determine its temperature, which how-
ever appeared not to differ from that of the springs of that class
generally.

It it strongly saline to the taste; 1000 parts of the water
yield 7.36 parts of solid matter, consisting of alkaline chlorids,
with bromids and iodids in considerable quantity, and very small
portions of chlorids of calcium and magnesium, besides carbon-
ates of lime and magnesia, with small portions of carbonate of
strontia, and a trace of iron.

Georgian Spring of PlantageneL

Under this title, the water of a mineral spring upon the pro-
perty of Captain Kain, has lately been brought into this city.
A qualitative analysis of a specimen of the water, sent me by the
proprietor, shows it be a very strong saline, resembling the Plan-
tagenet water already so well known to the public. It affords
11.84 parts of solid matter in 1000, and contains besides alkaline
chlorids and small portions of bromids and iodids, chlorids of
magnesium and calcium ; the former in great abundance. Be-
sides these there is a large quantity of carbonates of lime and
magnesia, with a trace of iron.

In the month of January last I went by request to visit a
spring, situated about two leagues beyond St. Eustache, on

104

the land of Joseph Laurin. The water contains but a small
amount of mineral ingredients ; 1000 parts yield by evaporation
1.88 parts, consisting of common salt with a large proportion of
sulphates of lime and magnesia, besides carbonates of these
earthy bases; it contains no salts of iodine and but a trace of
bromids.

Minerals and Metallic Ores.

But few examinations of this kind have been made during the
past season; of different specimens of galena which at your
request, I have submitted to examination for silver, I may men-
tion those from Brome, E. T., Chateauguay, from the vicinity of
Toronto, and from Bay St. Paul ; none of them were found to be
argentiferous.

I have examined specimens of bog manganese from Tring>
St. George and Ste. Marie Nouvelle Beauce, and from Ste.
Anne ; they contain respectively 25, 20.5, 30, and 38 per cent of
peroxyd of manganese. These impure ores contain a large pro-
portion of oxyd of iron in admixture, and those of Tring and St.
George are mixed with silicious sand.

The detection of the very rare mineral species Humboldtine,
or oxalate of iron, in the shales of the Hamilton group from
Cape Ipperwash, is a fact of interest to mineralogists. It en-
crusts the surface of the shales as a soft earthy coating, dull and
of a sulphur yellow color, and resembles at first sight the pollen of
pines which is often found in similar situations. By heat it in-
stantly blackens and becomes magnetic ; a continuance of the
heat changes it to red. Its occurrence in a shale containing the
remains of a species of Calamités, tends to confirm the idea of
Rivero, that its formation is due to the decomposition of plants.

The result of my examination of the specimens of the iron
ores of Bay St. Paul, shows the existence of deposits of titanife-
rous iron of hitherto unexampled magnitude. One mass, as
described by yourself, is 90 feet in breadth by 300 in length, and
besides great numbers of masses a few feet in diameter, forming
nodules in the syenitic rock, there is said to be another surpass-
ing even the first mentioned in size.

The ore is massive, and often coarsely graimlar ; its color

105

and streak are black, and its lustre metallic. It affects very
feebly the magnetic needle. Its specific gravity is 4.56 — 4.66,
and hardness 6.

The qualitative analysis of tv^^o specimens from different lo-
calities shevv^ed them to be quite similar in composition, and the
analysis of a fragment from the large mass gave —

Oxyd of Titanium 48.60

Protoxyd of Iron 46.44

Magnesia 3.60

98.64

No traces of silica, lime or manganese were present. The
iron was principally in the state of protoxyd, but a portion ex-
isting^ as peroxyd makes the deficiency observed. If with
Mosander we regard the proportions of metal and oxygen in the
compound, such that their equivalents shall be as 2 : 3, we have
by calculation the following composition —

Oxyd of Titanium (TiO 2) 48.60

Protoxyd of Iron 37.06

Peroxyd of Iron ^ 10.42

Magnesia 3.60

99.68

This result is sensibly the same as that obtained by H. Rose,
for the titaniferous iron from Ilmensee in the Urals, to which he
has given the name of Ilmenite. He obtained —

Oxyd of Titanium 46.92

Protoxyd of Iron 37.86

Peroxyd of Iron 10.74

Magnesia 1.14

Protoxyd of Manganese 2.73

99.39

To this variety then our Canadian deposit is referrible. The
consumption of the compounds of titanium in the arts, is at pre-
sent limited, and a sufficient supply is afforded by the native
oxyd, rutile. If at a future time a greater demand should
arise, it would be necessary to seek some more abundant source
of the mineral ; and the localities at Bay St. Paul might then

106

be made to furnish inexhaustible supplies of it at a very mode-
rate price.

I regret that some interesting investigations, of M^hich I had
hoped to present the results in this Report, are as yet unfinished,
and must be reserved for a future occasion.

I have the honor to be,
Sir,

Your very obedient servant,

T. S. HUNT.

CATALOGUE

OF SOME OF THE

ECONOMIC MINERALS AND DEPOSITS

OF CANADA,

WITH THEIR LOCALITIES.

Note — The quantities in the localities indicated are not in every case of a suffi-
cient amount to be profitably available, but they are always of sufficient importance
to draw attention to the localities, as a possible guide to the discovery of others in
the vicinity, where quantities may be greater.

Metals and their Ores.

ÎROîi...... Magnetic Marmora, range 1, lot 7 (a 100 feet bed) ; range 2,

lot 13 ; range 9, lot 9 ; range 9, lot 6.
Madoc, range 4, lot 2, (a 25 feet bed) ; range 5, lot

11 ; range 6, lot 10; range 7, lot 9.
South Sherbrooke, C. W , Myers Lake, range 3, lots

17, 18, 19, (a 60 feet bed).
Bedford, range -, lot -.

Hull, range 7, lot 11, (a 40 feet bed); range 5, lot

11; range 6, lots 12 and 13.
Litchfield, Portage du Fort, a small vein.
Specular Lake Huron, Wallace Mine location, near Whitefish

River, (a 15 feet vein).
McNab, ranges C and D, lot 6, Dochart River, (a 12

feet vein).

Bog Middleton ; Charlotville ; Walsingham.

West Gwillimsbury, mouth of the Holland River.

Fitzroy, Chats ; Eardley, range 8, lot 20 ; March,
Constance Lake ; Hull, range 7, lot 14 ; Terapleton,
McArthur's mill; Vaudreuil Seignory, Côte St.
Charles and Sac au Sable.

St. Maurice Forges.

Stanbridge, range -, lot -; Simpson, range 12, lot 8 ;
Ireland, range 4, lot 12; Lauzon Seignory, St.
Lambert ; Vallier Seignory, junction of Rivière
du Sud and Bras.

108

Titaniferous...^\„ Armand East, lot 45, (a 5 feet bed).

Sutton, (in beds of 2 to 8 feet) range 9, lots 4, 5, 6,

7, 9 ; range 10, lots 7, 8 ; range 11, lots 7, 9.
Brome, (in beds of 2 to 15 feet) range 3, lots 1,2;

range 4, lots 5, 6 ; range 5, lots 4, 5.
Bolton, range 14, lot 2.

Vaudreuil Beauce Seignory, north comer, (a 45 feet
bed).

Bay St. Paul, St. Urbain, (a 90 feet bed) ; St. Lazare,
(a still larger mass).

Zinc Sulphuret Lake Superior, Prince's location; Mamainse.

Lead Sulphuret Fitzroy, range 8, lot 12 ; Bedford, range — , lot, — .

Bastard, range — , lot — ; Petite Nation Seignory ?
Gaspé, Little Gaspé Cove and Indian Cove.

CoTPEH... Sulphur ets^ ^c....Lake Superior —

Spar Island, Prince's location, a 4. feet vein (vitre-
ous sulphuret, with silver).

St. Ignace Island, Harrison's, Terrier's and
Merritt's locations ; (native copper, vu lih silver).

Michipicoten Island, (native copper, with silver).

Mica Bay, Mamainse, (yellow, variegated, and
vitreous sulph urets) .
Lake Huron —

Root River, a 3 feet vein, (yellow sulphuret).

Echo Lake, (yellow sulphuret).

Bruce Mines, a 4 feet vein, (yellow, variegated, and
viti-eous sulphur ets).

Wallace Mine, Whitefish River, (yellow sulphuret).
Eastern Townships —

Upton, range 21, lot (argentiferous yellow
sulphuret,) a 1 foot vein.

Ascot, range 7, lot 17, (argenti- auriferous yellow
, sulphuret,) a 2 feet vein.

Inverness, range 2, lot 4, (variegated sulphuret,) a
2 feet vein.

"^icviEh... Sulphur et, ^c....Lake Huron, Wallace Mine.

Augmentation to La Noraye and Dautraye

Seignory, (with iron pyrates,) traces.
Brompton, range 1 1, lot 19, (nickel ochre,) traces.

Silver! Native, Sfc Lake Superior-
Prince's location, a bunch of 4 cwt. of 3^ per
cent, met with, equal to 72 lbs. of silver per
ton of rock.

109

•St. Ignace Island, Harrison's, Ferrier's and

Merritt's locations.
Michipicoten Island, north side.
Gold... Native, in G^rayeZ....Vaudreuil Beauce Seignory, Rivière Guillaume;

Rivière Bras ; Ruisseau Lessard ; Rivière

Toufie des Pins for 3 miles up ; Ruisseau du

Lac.

Aubert de L'Isle Seignory, Rivière Famine.

Aubert Galiion Seignory, Russieau , Pozer's

River for 3 miles up.
Rivière Metgermet opposite Jersey.

Gold... Native, in Vein Lake Superior, Prince's location, (traces).

Ascot, range 7, lot 17, (with copper and silver,
value of gold $1 per ton of rock.)

Chemical Materials, being such as require peculiar chemical

treatment to fit them for use.
Uranium — {For glass staining, and porcelain painting, SfC.) —

Madoc, range 4, lot 12, traces in the iron ore bed, in the form of
ura?i ochre.

Chromium — For glass staining, porcelain and oil painting ^c.) —
Bolton, range 7, lot 26, a 12 inch bed of chromic iron.
Augmentation of Ham, range 2, lot 21, a 14 inch bed of chromic
iî^on.

Cobalt — (For glass staining, and porcelain painting, ^c.) —

Lake Superior, Prince's location, (traces) ; Lake Huron, Wallace
Mine, (traces.)

Augmentation to La Noraye and Dautraye Seignory, with nickel,
(traces.)

Makganese Bog— (For bleaching and decolorizing agents). —

Bolton, range 12, lot 22 ; Stanstead, range 4, lot 24 ; range 10, lot 9 ;
Tring, near eastern boundary on road from Lambton to St.
François Beauce ; xVubert Gallion Seignory, near Pozer's River ;
St. Mary Seignory, 3rd range, Frampton road; St. Anne
Seignory.

laoN Pyrites — (For manufacture of copperas and sulphu?^) —

Clarendon, range 2, lot 7 ; Terrebonne Seignory, a 4 feet vein ;
Augmentation to La Noraye and Dautraye Seignory, a 40 feet
vein ; Garthby,' range -, lot -.
Dolomite, with 45 per cent, of Car; jnate of Magnesia — (For manu-
facture of Epsom Salts and the Magnesia of Co?nmerce) —
Exit of Lake iMazinaw ; I'T. Sherbrooke, C. W. ; Drummond; St.
Armand ; Dunham ; Sutton ; Brome ; Ely ; Durham ; Melbourne ;
Kingsey; Shipton ; Chester; Halifax; Inverness; Leeds; St.
Giles Seignory ; St. Mary Seignory; St. Joseph Seignory.

110

Magmesite, with 83 ^er cent, of Carbonate of Magnesia — (^For the same
purpose) —

Sutton, range 7, lot 12 ; Boulton, range 9, lot 17.
Stone Paints.

Babttes — Permanent White —

Lake Superior, in a multitude of veins on the north shore from
Pigeon River to Thunder Cape ; Bathurst, range 6, lot 4 ; McNab,
mouth of Dochart.
Iron Ochre — Yellow Ochre, Spanish Brown, Sfe. —

Waltham, Paint Lake or Pond, near Harwood Pierce's Clearing,
Black River; Mansfield, Grand Marais, opposite the most north-
ern point of Calumet Island ; Durham, range 4, lot 4.
Talcose Slate — Ochre Yellow — Stanstead, range 9, lot 13.

French While — Stanstead, range 9, lot 13 ; Leeds, range
13, lot 17.

Soapstone — White —

Sutton, range 7, lot 12; Potton, range 5, lot 20, very pure ; Bolton,
range 1 , lot 17 ; range 2, lot 6 ; range 4, lot 4 ; range 11, lot 1 ;
Melbourne, range 2, lot 19; Ireland, range 3, lot 10; Vaudreuil
Beauce Seignory, range 3 on the Bras, pure ; Broughton, range 4,
lot 12 ; Elzevir, range 1, lot 27 ; range 2, lot 13, pure.
Serpentine — Greenish White —

Eastern Townships, in places too numerous to be particularized.
(For the range see Marble.)
Ferruginous Clay — Light Red —

Nassagaweya, McKann's Mills ; Nottawasaga, Mad River.

Materials applicable to the Arts.

Lithographic Stone —

Marmora, range 4, lot 8 ; Rama, on St. John's Lake, south of the
Junction, and on Lake Couchiching; there are probably many
exposures between Rama and Marmora, the distance being 70
miles.

Materials applicable to Jewellery, and Ornamental purposes.

Agates Lake Superior — St. Ignace and neigbouring Islands ; Michi-

picoten Island.

Jasper Ascot, near Sherbrooke, in a bed ; Gaspé, in pebbles.

Labradorite Drummond, range 3, lot 1 ; Bathurst, range 9, lot 19.

SuNSTONE Bathurst, range 6, lot 3.

Hyacinths Grcn ville, range 5, lot 10.

Oriental Rubies )t» t> ni*oi^' •* - n
V ...Burgess Range 9, lot 2, (in minute grains.)
Sapphires ^ o o

Ill

Amethysts Lake Superior, Spar Island, and sundry places along the

neighbouring coast.
Ribboned Chert — {For Caweos)— Lake Superior — Thunder Bay.

Jet Montreal.

Materials for Glass making.
White Quartz Sand Stone —

Lake Huron — on the north shore, and the Islands near, in great
abundance.

Cayuga, lots 45 and 46, Town line, north of Talbot road; Dunn ;
Vaudreuil Seignory ; Isle Perrot Seignory; Beauharnois Seignory.
Pitchstone, Basalt and Allied Rocks — (For Black Glass) —

Lake Superior — North shore and Islands ; Michipicoten Island, and
East coast.

Lake Huron — in the trap dykes of the north shore, and neighbour-
ing Islands.

Rigaud mountain ; Montreal mountain ; Montarville mountain.
Refractory Materials.

S0AP8TONE — Elzevir, range 1, lot 27 ; range 2, lot 13 ; Potton, range 5, lot
20; Vaudreuil, Beauce Seignory, range 3 on the Bras ; Broughton,
range 4, lot 12.

AsBESTUs — Potton, range 5, lot 20.

Sandstone — Lake Huron, Island of Campement d'Ours, west side ; St.

Maurice Forges.
Plumbago — Grenville, range 5, lot 10, 2 veins.

Manures.

Phosphate of Lime —

Ottawa, near the division line between Westmeath and Ross, above
the head of Moore's Slide ; Calumet Slide ; Burgess, range 8, lot
4 ; Hull range — lot — near Blasdell's mill ; Bay St. Paul ; Mur-
ray Bay.

Gypsum —

Dumfries, range 1, lot 27 ; Village plot of Paris ; Brantford, range 1,
lot 15 ; range 2, lot 16 ; range 3, lot 17 ; Oneida, lot 57, and the
block next below on the Grand River ; Seneca, lots 1 7 and 18, on
the Grand River, and the Town plot of Indiana ; Cayuga, range
3, lots 19, 20, 21, 22, 23.
Shell Marl —

North Gwillimsbury, east point of Cook's Bay ; Calumet Island, in
a small lake 2 miles south east from Campement des Plaines ;
Calumet Island, 1 mile north west of Desjardin's clearing, oppo-
site Moore's slide, and in several small lakes lower down the

112

island ; Clarendon, range 1, lot 23 ; Mink Lake, west of Bromley ;
McNab, White Lake ; Nepean, on Spark's laud, near Bytown ;
Gloucester, Hon. Mr. McKay's laud, near Bytown ; Argenteuil,
range 1, lot 3 ; East Hawkesbury, range 7, lot 11; Vaudreuii
Seignory, rear of Cavagnol Point ; St. Benoit, Grand Brûlé, on
Chenier's farm ; Grande Côte, between St. Thérèse Ferry and St.
Eustache, on McAllister's farm ; opposite St. Rose, on the road
to St. Thérèse, on Henrich's farm ; St. Armand West, lots 156
and 157 ; Stanstead, range 11, lot 5 or 6, St. Hyacinthe Seignory,
junction of Granby and St. Pie roads ; Montreal, St. Joseph ;
New Carlisle, in 4 or 5 small lakes, 1 or 2 miles from the
village.

Grinding and Polishing Materials.

Mill Stones —

The localities of granitic and syenitic boulders strewed about the
country, and used for mill stones, are too numerous and too acci-
dental to be stated ; these boulders are derived chiefly from the
granitic or gneissoid rocks, which range on the north side of the
Ottawa and St. Lawrence, from Lake Superior to Labrador.
Independent of them various rocks in situ are and may be used for
the purpose, such as —

Silicious Conglomerate — Vaudreuii Seignory, Cascades, and Pointe
du Grand Detroit; Ham, range 11, lot 10; Port Daniel, at
L' Ance à la Veille.

Granular and Corneous Quartz Rock — This rock accompanies the
serpentine of the Eastern Townships, (for the range of which see
Marble,) and occurs in too many places to be enu;i:erated ; a
good sample has been obtained by the Hon. Mr. Knowlton from
Bolton, range 6.

Granite — Stanstead ; Barnston ; Barford ; Hereford ; Ditton ; Mars-
ton; Strafford; Weedon ; Vaudreuii Beauce Seignory, near the
band of serpentine, (The Vaudreuii Beauce stone is highly es-
teemed.)

Pseudo- Granite (without Quartz grains) — St. Thérèse, Belœi!,
Rougement, Yamaska, Shefford, aud Brome mountains.
Grindstones — A sandstone designated as the grey band which lies at the
summit of the red strata of the Medina sandstones, and which
reaches from Queenston by St. Catherine, and round the extre-
mity of Lake Ontario by Hamilton, to Esquesing, and thence to
Nottawasaga, has been used in some of the norlhern Townships for
grindstones.

113

Sorae parts of thePotsdam sandstone have been used for the purpose
as in Allumettes, at the Allumettes Falls ; and in Fitzroy, at
Shirreff's mills.

Some parts of the Gaspé sandstone, in Gaspe Bay, would yield
grindstones, but though these might prove the best of the Canadian
stones, none of them would equal those of New Brunswick and
Nova Scotia, or those of Newcastle, in England.

Whetstones and Hones — Madoc, range 5, lot 4; Marmora, range 6, lot 22;

Lake Mazinaw, rear of Palmerston ; Fitzroy, Whetstone Point,
Lake Chaudière ; Potton, range 11, on Magog Lake ; Stanstead,
from Whetstone Island, in Magog Lake, by range 5, lots 19 and
20, and range 7, lot 26, to range 9, lot 28 ; thence through Hatley,
to range 9, lot 3, on Massawippi Lake ; Stanstead, range 9, lot 4 ;
Bolton, range 14, lot 5 : Shipton, range 14, lot 19, aqd range 5,
lot 16 ; Marston, on Megantic Lake.

Canadian Tripoli, a silicious infusorial deposit — Augmentation to La
Noraye and Dautraye Seignory.

Materials for Paving, Tiling, <^c.
RooriNG Slates —

Kingsey, range 1, lot 4 ; Halifax, range 1, lot 14; Frampton, on the
land of Mr. Quigley.
Flag Stones —

Toronto, Rivers Credit, Little Mimico, and Etobicoke ; Etobicoke,
River Humber ; York, East Branch of River Don ; Lake Temis-
camang, 7 miles below the Galère ; Bagot, at Calaboga rapids;
Horton and Clarendon, at the Chenaux ; Sutton, range 2, lot 19 ;
Potton, range 10, lot 28, at Potton Ferry ; Stanstead, east side
of Memphremagog Lake, for some miles above the Oulet ; Inver-
ness, range 2, lot 5; Port Daniel L'Ance à la Vielle.

Building Materials. •
Granite of superior quality^ white, and cleavahle —

Stanstead, ranges 4, 5, 6, 7, lots 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ; range 9, lot 4 to
range 11, lot 13 ; Barnston, range 9, lot 1 ; ranges 10 and 11, lots
7 to 15: Barford, ranges 1 and 2, lots 5 to 9; Hereford, ranges 4
and 5, lots 19 and 20 ; Marston, 1^ miles from upper end of Me-
gantic Lake ; Great Megantic Mountain, occupying an area of
12 square miles, about the United corners of Marsden, Hampden,
and Ditton ; Little Megantic Mountain, 6 square miles in Wins-
low, about 1^ miles south-west from line between Aylmer and Gay-
hurst; Weedon, 1 mile south-east of Lake Louisa; Winslow, 3 miles
long, about 5 miles south-east of Lake Aylmer ; Strafford, 1 mile,
and 3 miles up Felton River ; also 6 miles from foot of Lake St.
Francis ; Lambton, 6 miles from foot of Lake St. Francis.
P

114

Pseubo-Gbanitb without quartz grains, white, cleavable —

St. Thérèse, Belœil, Rougeraint, Yamaska, Shefford and Brome
Mountains.
Sandstone yellowish white —

Niagara, at Queenston ; Barton at Hamilton ; Flamborough West ;
Nelson ; Nassagaweya ; Esquesing, range 5, lot 17 ; range 6, lot
— ; Mono ; Nottawasaga ; Cayuga, range — , lot 45 and 46 ;
Rigaud Seignory, Rivière à la Graise; Vaudreuil Seignory, Pointe
Cavagnol; IslePerrot ; St. Eustache ; Terrebonne Seignory ,- Beau-
harnois Seignory ; St. Maurice Forges ; Allumettes ; Fitzroy.
Calcareous Sandstone —

Rideau Canal ; Bytown ; various parts of Ottawa, north side from
Bytown, to Papineau Island ; various places from Grenville to
• Point Fortune ; Brockville ; Murray Bay, at Les Ecorchats, and
White Cape, and the lots of J. B. du Berger and T. Chapreon ;
Lauzon Seignory, at St. Nicholas ; Cap Rouge near Quebec.
L1MBST.0NE —

Maiden ; Manitoulin Islands, along the south side ; St. Joseph
Island ; Coast of Lake Huron, from Cape Hurd to Rivière au
Sable (north); various parts from Cabot's Head to Sydenham, in
Owen's Sound; and from Sydenham, by Euphrasia ta Nottawasaga ;
thence by Mono to Esquesing, and by Nelson to Ancaster ;
Thorold ; Matchedash Bay ; Orillia ; Rama ; Mara and various
parts to Marmora ; Madoc ; Belleville ; Kingston ; McNab ; By-
town ; and various parts to Plantagenet and Hawkesbury ; Corn-
wall ; Isle Bizard ; Beauharnois Island ; Caughnawaga ; Mon-
treal ; Isle Jesus ; Terrebonne ; Phillipsburgh ; St. Dominique ;
Grondines ; Deschambault ; Beauport ; Bay St. Paul ; and
Murray Bay ; Upton ; Acton ; Wickham ; Stanstcad ; Hatley ;
Dudswell ; Temiscouta Lake ; Gaspé ; Port Daniel ; Richmond ;
" Anticosti Island.

Lime— Common — In the various localities above enumerated for limestone.

Magnesian — In the localities indicated for dolomite.

Hydraulic — Point Douglas, Lake Huron ; Cayuga, half a mile and
83 miles below the Village, on the Grand River ; Thorold ; Kings-
ton ; Nepean, near Bytown ; Argenteuil ?

Materials for Bricks, Tiles and Pottery.
Clay — For Red Bricks — This is so widely spread in the valleys of the St,
Lawrence, Ottawa, Richelieu, &c,, that the localities are too
numerous to be mentioned.
For White -BrtcAs— York, range 2 from the Bay, lots 19 and 20 ;
Peterborough.

For Tiles and common Pottery-^AW the same localities.

115

Marble— White — Dudswell ; exit of Lake Mazinaw, rear of Palmcrston (a
dolomite.)
Black — Cornwall ; Phillipsburgh.
Brown — Packenham, at Dickson's mill.

Grey and Mottled — McNab ; Phillipsburg ; St. Dominique ;
Montreal.

Variegated, white and green — Gren ville.
Ve7^d Antique — Stukely.

Serpentine — In many parts suitable for ornamental purposes, in
a range of 135 miles, running through Potton, Bolton, Stukely,
Orford, Brompton, Melbourne, Shipton, Tingwick, Wotton,
Ham and its Augmentation, Wolfestown, Garthby, Ireland,
Coleraine, Adstoch, Tring, Vaudreuil Beauce to Cranbouine;
and in another range of ten miles, running through Leeds.

Combustible Materials.

Feat — Wainfleet ; Humberstone ; Westmeath ; Beckwith ; Goulburn ;

Napean ; Gloucester ; Cumberland ; Clarence : Plantagenet ;
Alfred ; Caledonia ; L'Orignal ; Osnabruck ; Finch ; Winchester,
Roxburgh ; Longueuil Seignory ; St. Hyacinthe Seignory, at St.
Dominique ; Ste. Marie de Monnoir Seignory ; Riviere du Loup
Seignory ; Rivière Quelle Seignory ; Matanne and McNider,
between Rivière Branché and Rivière Matanne.

Petroleum, Naptha, &c.— Mosa, range 1, lot 29, and several spots farther
down on the River Thames ; River St. John, Gaspé, at the mouth,
and 6 miles up on Silver Brook.

Asphalt — Enniskillen, range 6 or 7, lots 1 9.

Sundry other Materials.

Moulding Sand — Augusta, 3 miles above Prescott ; Montreal ; L'Acadie ;
Stanstead.

Fuller's Earth— Nassagaweya, at McKann's mill, Sixteen-mile Creek.

Science QE185.A2
1846-1850
Report of progress -
Geological Survey o1
Geological Survey o1

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