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J4 The Ottawa Naturalist. [May 



commerce. The quantity so far found appears to be sufficient 

 to supply the demand for many years, and there should shortly 

 be a marked development along lines of production. The im- 

 ports of emery in 1895, which it is supposed this mineral will 

 replace, amounted to nearly 1 5,000 dollars, but as there is a large 

 quantity from abroad into the United States, it may be expected 

 that the Canadian mines should contribute largely in that 

 direction. The development of this area will be eagerly looked 

 for. The mineral occurs in connection with certain areas of 

 intrusive rocks in the crystalline series, chiefly granites and 

 syenites, which are found over a large extent of country in the 

 vicinity of the Madawaska River to the south of Barry's Bay, 

 which is at the present time the nearest point of shipment, by 

 the Ottawa and Parry Sound Railway. There are large areas of 

 these old rocks, many of which are now very difficult of access, 

 but which will, in process of time, become more readily acces- 

 sible, and doubtless large stores of mineral wealth, whose 

 existence we can now only conjecture, will be discovered. Many 

 of these valuable deposits are found out only by conditions of 

 settlement or by railroad building, as was the case in the great 

 asbestus areas of the Eastern Townships of Quebec, which were 

 first made available by the construction of the Quebec Central 

 Railway, the areas traversed by that line in this locality being 

 previously regarded as of no economic value on account of the 

 rocky and barren character of the district, yet from a small and 

 rocky patch of a few hundred acres there have been taken in 

 the seventeen years since 1880 almost 6,odo,ooo dollars worth of 

 asbestus, or almost the entire supply for the world's market. 



It may, therefore, be confidently anticipated that as our 

 country becomes more and more developed, fresh deposits of 

 mineral wealth will be disclosed, as indeed is only to be expected 

 in a comparatively new country like this, containing such a vast 

 stretch of mineral-bearing formations. Prior to the building of 

 the Canadian Pacific through the rough country to the north and 

 west of Lake Superior, which had up to that time been almost 

 inaccessible, we had no idea of the great and ever increasing 



