ARCH.EAN PROTAXES OF THE CONTINENT. 37 



Much the larger part of later fragmental rocks, limestones excepted, are 

 made out of what the Archrean ridges have lost. 



2. Again, the Archsean ranges east of the Appalachian protaxis and those 

 west of that of the Rocky Mountain are entitled to like recognition in the 

 continental history. 



To the northeastward, over the New England and Canada extension of the 

 continent, there are two or more such ranges. 



First. An Archoean range of prominent importance crosses — with some 

 interruptions and approximately parallel ridges as usual — New Brunswick 

 from the south side of Chaleur Bay, on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, having 

 outliers in southwestern New Brunswick, passes southwestward to the coast- 

 region of Maine east of Mt. Desert, and thence continues as a broad belt into 

 Eastern Massachusetts and perhaps into Eastern Connecticut. It is a 

 boundary between two Paleozoic regions. On its eastern side it has fossil- 

 iferous Cambrain and later Paleozoic rocks in New Brunswick and Eastern 

 Maine, Upper Silurian occurring in Machias, Pembroke, and elsewhere, and 

 fossiliferous Cambrian in Eastern Massachusetts — all belonging to the west- 

 ern border of the eastern of the two Paleozoic regions ; and on its western 

 and northwestern side there is the large Paleozoic basin of Middle and 

 Northern Maine. And if we follow the western outline of this Archsean 

 range from Maine into Massachusetts, we find that the Nashua synclinal of 

 argillite and mica-schist, just west, is probably an extension of the Maine 

 Paleozoic to Worcester, where anthracite, graphite, and carboniferous plants 

 occur as evidence of the existence of the coal formation. The lines on Prof. 

 Edward Hitchcock's Geological Map of Massachusetts, in his quarto report 

 of 1841, correspond well with this view, and the descriptions of the rocks by 

 Mr. L. S. Burbauk and Prof. W. 0. Crosby favor it.* 



Secondly. A second range of probably Archsean rocks commences in the 

 northern part of western Newfoundland and is continued southwestward, 

 with the usual interruptions, along Nova Scotia. This second Archaean 

 range and the preceding are the confines of the great trough — Bay of Fundy 

 trough it might be called — in which lie the Carboniferous and other Paleo- 

 zoic rocks of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and western Newfoundland, and 

 the Triassic rocks of the borders of the Bay of Fundy, of undetermined 



* Mr. L. S. Burbank in Prof. W. O. Crosby's "Report on the Geological Map of Massachusetts," 

 1876, in which Mr. Burbank's observations are published as a separate paper; also Professor 

 Crosby in his Geology of Eastern Mssachusetts, Boston Soc. N. H., 1880. 



Professor Hitchcock's Map, in his Report of 1841, represents the synclinal of mica-schist as hav- 

 ing along the center a broad belt of clay slate, and he describes the slate (pages 127, 556, and also 

 page 55 of his Report of 1835) as becoming a finegrained imperfect mica-schist at Worcester, where 

 it contains a bed of anthracite a few feet thick. The mica-schist is described as arenaceous and in 

 some places passing into quartz rock. Amos Eaton, in his Geological Text-book (1832), speaks of 

 the rock at Worcester as argillite containing "anthracite and impressions of ferns." In Harvard, 

 to the east of north of Worcester, the area of mica-schist contains aridge of granite, and east of this 

 ridge, according to Mr. Burbank, a coarse conglomerate occurs, which to the south blends with 

 the conformable mica-schist. The area of argiilite and mica schist widens northward and bends 

 northeastward into the Merrimae valley at Lowell. On the east of the synclinal lies the Archaean 

 area. 



