No. 1.] DAWSON — aEOLOQY OP NOVA SCOTIA. 15 



The remarks made by Dr. H. on the alleged Lower Silurian 

 of Wentworth, scarcely merit criticism. It is to be rcocretted, 

 for his own sake, that he has ventured to attack Mr. Billings's 

 determination of the age of the fossils, as he has done (p. 480), 

 and also that he has republished his section of the Wentworth 

 cutting, in which the well-known intrusive dykes of dark diabase, 

 60 abundant in the Coboquids, figure as bedded diorites, and 

 swell the thickness of a section which is in many respects truly 

 "remarkable." I have not had an opportunity to examine Dr. 

 Honeyman's collections from Wentworth ; but those I have my- 

 self made, and those I have seen in the Museum of the Geological 

 Survey, by no means warrant his determination of a Bala or 

 Hudson River age. This subject will be found noticed in the 

 Supplement to Acadian Geology, p. 75. 



This review has extended to too great a length ; but one is 

 tempted to notice the Laurentian discoveries of the author. Dr. 

 Honeyman, when employed by Sir W. E. Logan in 1868 in ex- 

 ploring at Arisaig, examined the coast east of Malignant cove, 

 and found there the extension to the sea cliff of rocks apparently 

 identical with that old metamorphic series which I have named 

 the Cobequid series. These he has described as Laurentian, and 

 quarrels with Sir W. E. Logan, Dr. Hunt and myself for failing 

 to admit this age. My own justification is, — first, that, as Dr. H. 

 admits, there is no good evidence from stratigraphy or fossils to 

 prove this great age ; and secondly, that after somewhat exten- 

 sive studies of Laurentian rocks, I have been unable to see any 

 resemblance btitween the typical rocks of this age and the so- 

 called Laurentian of lirisaig, the Cobequids and southern Cape 

 Breton. All these rocks I hold, for reasons stated in the Supple- 

 ment to iVcadian Geology, to be probably either Lower Silurian, 

 Cambrian or Huronian. Dr. H. repeatedly taunts me with affirm- 

 ing these rocks, and even those of St. Anne's in Northern Cape 

 Breton, to be Devonian ; and goes so far as to relate an anecdote 

 (p. 453) which would seem to show that so late as 1867 he had 

 retailed this fiction to Sir Wyville Thomson, in connection with 

 specimens of Eozoon stated to have been obtained in these rocks. 

 Lest the same practical joke should be played on others, it may 

 be well to say that I have never seen anything resembling Eozoon 

 from St. Anne's, and that I am not aware of ever having supposed 

 the crystalline rocks of that promontory to be Devonian. la 

 reality, after much study of specimens, and after revisiting ia 



