580 Mineralogy and Geology of Nova Scotia. 



stone formed about the head of an old axe which had been 

 long buried in the ground. 



The black limestone on the Cape Breton side of the Gut of 

 Canso contains veins of beautiful violet purple spar. 



The precipitous ledge of Cap Dore, which contains native 

 copper, has some of its fissures united by veins of jasper and 

 chalcedony. The amygdaloid, of which some fragments are 

 found embedded in the ground near Halifax, and large blocks 

 on the basin of mines, appears to the eye to be the same stone 

 as the lava of Teneriffe; but this last contains empty vesicles 

 like blacksmiths' cinders ; while in our amygdaloid the vesicles 

 are filled either with earthy chlorite (painter's mountain 

 green), or with balls of opaque lime spar (steatites) composed 

 of crystallisations which radiate from a common centre, and 

 generally coated slightly with mountain green. 



This amygdaloid appears to be very ancient lava, the vesicles 

 of which have been filled up by the crystallisation of a portion 

 of its material. 



There are in this province masses of coarse gritty calcare- 

 ous rock, which contain abundance of cockle shells in their 

 natural situation. Upon breaking this rock, most of the pairs 

 will be found to have the space which was formerly occupied 

 by the animal partly filled with transparent glittering crystals 

 of lime spar. A very small number are empty, and a small 

 number filled completely with an opaque stone, finer-grained 

 and lighter-coloured than the external rock ; the shell itself 

 having changed its appearance, and become more like the rock 

 in which it is enclosed. The appearance of the whole indi- 

 cates that these shells will iinally disappear, and the rock ap- 

 pear, and be a homogeneous stone. On the barren part of 

 the southern coast of the province, masses of conglomerate 

 rock occur, composed of the common slaty gravel cemented by 

 yellow oxide of iron derived from the slate. In other places 

 ■may be seen similar conglomerates ; but the yellow oxide has 

 become red. The whinstone gravel and sjnallest pieces of 

 slate are also red. The large pieces of slate still retain their 

 colour. Another stone is all red; the form of a few large 

 pieces of slate are visible ; the small pieces are no longer to be 

 seen, but a few very transparent specks of quartz appear, oc- 

 cupying interstices between some of the fragments of stone con- 

 tained in the original mass. 



In the eastern part of theprovince, large masses of pudding- 

 stone are frequently met with. They are composed of rounded 

 pebbles of white, red, and blue stone, mostly siliceous, ce- 

 mented, generally, by quartz, which fills the interstices: in a few 

 instances the cement is sandstone. As these pebbles are the 



