1899] Mineral Resources of the Ottawa District, n 



nected with the diorites of that area, and the new showing of 

 nickehferous pyrrhotite on the same island has a large mass of 

 diorite close to the development of the ore. These diorite and 

 granite masses in this locality clearly break through the asso- 

 ciated crystalline limestone and associated gneiss. 



As for copper, the Ottawa district has as yet failed to pro- 

 duce anything of economic importance, but the silver-bearing 

 galenas of Lake Temiscaming which have been opened up, 

 appear to have a somewhat extensive development, though 

 mining in this quarter has of late years languished In the 

 Wanapetae district however, which is on the western border of 

 the Ottawa basin, very valuable deposits of rich gold ore have 

 been recently exploited and are now being worked with good 

 prospects of profitable returns. 



Coal. 



Coal, of course, has never been found in the Ottawa 

 country, though scarcely a year goes by without the usual news- 

 paper paragraph to the effect that a large bed of this mineral 

 has been discovered in the area to the north of the upper St. Law- 

 rence. To many, this absence of coal has seemed a mystery, 

 and of late several severe attacks have been made upon the 

 scientific authorities in connection with deposits of so-called 

 coal in the Sudbury district to which the attention of everyone 

 was recently directed. The true coals of the eastern provinces 

 are confined almost entirely to the middle portion of the Car- 

 boniferous system, which lies at a much higher position in the 

 geological scale than any of the rock formations of Ontario, 

 which do not reach above the horizon of the Devonian. In one 

 area in New Brunswick in this last formation there is a deposit 

 of graphitic anthracite which has a thickness of several feet and 

 which was persistently boomed for some years, and caused a lot 

 of money to be wasted in an attempt to place it on the market 

 as a first-class fuel. This hope has never.been realized from the 

 fact that the mineral contained too great a percentage of ash 

 and graphite to burn well, the amount of residue after combus- 



