460 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [DeC. 



uncomformablj rocks of this age. They are totally unlike any Devo- 

 nian rocks occurring in the Province, while they agree peifectly 

 with the Lower Carboniferous conglomerates and sandstones of 

 the Carboniferous basin on the margin of which they lie. They 

 contain a few ill-preserved fossil plants like those found in similar 

 Carboniferous beds. Between the Carboniferous and Drift, the 

 only formation occurring in Nova Scotia is the New-Red-Sandstone, 

 to the rocks of which the beds under consideration bear no resem- 

 blance. They cannot be of drift-age, for their fragments form 

 rounded boulders in that deposit. They show no sign of having 

 suffered from metamorphism. The lower part of the beds of con- 

 glomerate or grit at their junction with the slates, is richly auri- 

 ferous, the gold occurring principally in the form of flattened scales, 

 sometimes a quarter of an inch in diameter, disseminated through 

 the rock. I have seen many fragments of the conglomerate, not a 

 cubic inch in size, on the surface of which twenty or thirty scales 

 of gold could be counted with the naked eye. Levels are 

 driven into the banks of the brook, at the junction of the two for- 

 mations : a foot or more of the lower part of the conglomerated 

 bed is removed and washed in the common miner's cradle and pan, 

 yielding rich returns. It is from this source that the greater part 

 of the gold mined at the locality is obtained. 



A machine is being erected on the spot to crush the conglome- 

 rate, in order that the go'd may be more thoroughly extracted. 



Gold has been washed from the drift overlying the conglomerate. 

 The source whence the gold was derived, was, doubtless, quartz- 

 veins in the clay-slgites. Only one lead, about a quarter of an 

 inch in thickness, has been discovered beneath the conglomerate. 

 It is richly auriferous, and has a strike of about north and south, 

 and a dip to the eastward of 70°. Non-auriferous quartz-veins are 

 very numerous in the slate-hills of the vicinity. That this lead 

 is older than the Carboniferous strata is plain from its ending 

 abruptly at the junction with the slates. 



From the above facts I think there can be no doubt that the 

 gold of Corbitt's Mills is of Pre-Carboniferous origin ; and since 

 the gold of that locality was derived from strata precisely similar 

 in character to those of the other gold-regions of Nova Scotia, and 

 which strata are but the re-appearance northward of the gold-bear- 

 ing rocks of the gold-fields of Renfrew and Oldham, and of the 

 metamorphic band of the Atlantic coast, I think that the Pre- 

 Carboniferous age of the gold of Nova Scotia is clearly indicated. 



