No. 3.] NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 173 



River group, a point to which we must refer subsequently; and 

 there is nothing incredible or even very unlikely in this. On the 

 other hand, knowing the complexities of all the parts of this 

 troubled sea of eastern paheozoic rocks which I liave studied, I 

 cannot deny that there may exist crests of beds older than 

 the Quebec group projecting locally and perhaps largely through 

 these rocks. I am the more inclined to believe this, since there 

 is the best reason to hold that the unaltered members of the 

 Quebec group, as mapped by the .Survey on the south shore of 

 the St. Lawrence, include beds ranging all the way from the 

 Lower Cambrian up to the Chazy. Similar, perhaps older, 

 beds, no doubt exist largely, mixed with igneous outflows and 

 breccias, in the hills of the interior. 



But if any man thinks proper to put down a hard and fast 

 line on the map of Eastern Canada, and to maintain that all the 

 crystalline rocks which apparently project through and rise above 

 the Quebec group, are of greater age, I must decline to go with 

 him in this assertion, since I feel certain that such an extreme 

 view cannot be in accordance with facts. No one, however, I 

 feel persuaded, will now go so far as this ; but I believe the pen- 

 dulum has abeady swung farther than it should in this direction, 

 and must go back again nearer to Sir William Logan's position. 

 Facts in support of this conclusion rise before my mind as I 

 write, and may be brought forward on some future occasion, but 

 they would involve a series of papers for their full elucidation. 



We have had presented to us ably and well by Mr. Selwyn, 

 Mr. Maclarlane, and Dr. Hunt, conclusions differing more or less 

 widely from those of Sir William, and from each other. There 

 are no doubt important elements of truth in them all, but when 

 these are fully and fairly sil'ted, the unprejudiced geologist will 

 conclude that while they may modify the results of Sir William's 

 work, they by no means overthrow them ; and that we are still 

 a long way from the solution in all their details of the problems 



which occupied Sir William to the last, and which he left only 

 jtartially solved. 



We may now sum this matter up, in so far as Sir William 

 Logan's work is concerned, and that of Richardson as his assist- 

 ant, and of Hall and Billings in the department of Pal;\3ontology. 

 Their researches have established : — (1) The general diversity 

 of mineral character in the Palieozoic sediments on the Atlantic 

 slope as compared with the internal plateau of Canada. In those 



