170 



owini^ to tlie necessity of obtaining topograohical data, which has been 

 laid upon the staff of the Geological Survey, over very lar^e portions of 

 Canada, the ground woric for many of our best maos his been derived 

 from their labours, and preat areas in all the provinces from the 

 Atlantic to the Picific have been mapped in detail, first of all 

 by the officers of that staff, as can be seen in the large published maps 

 of eastern Nova Srolia and in New Brunswick, in each of which many 

 thousands of miles of roads, streams and coast lines were carefully 

 measured and platted before the map necessary f )r the depicting of the 

 geology of these countries could be laid down with any attempt at ac- 

 curacy. In the newer and western sections, the well executed map 

 of the Sudbury district, the Lake of the Woods, large portions of the 

 Northwest plains, and great areas in the Rocky Mountains and British 

 Columbia, testify to the labours of the Geological survey in this capacity. 

 In the province of Quebec even, the celebrated map of the Eastern 

 Townships, which includes also a large poriiv)n of the province west of 

 the St. Lawence as well, has filmed the f )unditi')n of all subsequent 

 maps of that province since it was first carefully compiled in the 

 Geological Survey office from materials drawn from Crown Land plans, 

 supplemented and bound together w!th infinite pa'ns and lab lur, by 

 surveys made by the different officers of that depirtment, a work the 

 difficulty of v^'hich can only be properly understood by those who have 

 attempted similar compilations. 



Probably in no country under the sun do more complicated geo- 

 logical problems exist than in Car.ada, nor are such problems anywhere 

 on a grander scale. A territory embracing three and a half millions of 

 square miles, or very nearly the extent of the whole of Europe, and 

 extending from the 49ih parallel of latitude to far within the arctic 

 circle, and embracing the extremes of heat and cold, in the northern 

 part especially, where the fierce heat u( the short summer is sufficient 

 to ri[)en wheat almost to the 6oth degree of latitude. I-iere we have 

 the oldest known rocks of the globe, the solid backbone of the western 

 hemisi:)here, extending from Labrador, in a great V shaped area, to near 

 the mouth of the Mackenzie River, and including in its survey large 

 portions of the provinces of Quebec and Ontario, and with great over- 

 lying a.eas of all the systjms and formations of rock strata down to 



