No. 2.) WILKINS — GEOLOGY OF LABRADOR COAST. 87 



NOTE ON THE GEOLOGY OF THE LABRADOR 

 COAST. 



By D. F. H. Wilkins, B.A., Bac. App. Sc. 



During; the past summer a flying visit paid to a few localities 

 on the Labrador Coast enabled the writer to assert that what 

 has been alleged by Mr. Richardson of the Geological Survey, 

 concerning the stratigraphy of the Laurentian rocks between the 

 Bersimis and the Saguenay Rivers, is generally true concerning 

 the rocks further north-eastward, at least at the few places visi- 

 ted. The Lower Laurentian gneisses and diorites are invariably 

 fractured and cleaved in all directions, and intersected by several 

 fissures and some trap dykes, with a, generally speaking, north- 

 easterly strike. The stratification lines are very often so obscure 

 that it is almost impossible to say whether the rocks are meta- 

 morphic or eruptive. On these are superposed unconformably 

 the Upper Laurentian gneisses and norites with hyperites, and 

 in one locality, a bed of micaceous sandstone, all dipping at mo- 

 derate angles, lying in synclinals having, so far as examined, 

 dips ranging from 26° 10' to 63° 26' and an E. and W. to 

 N. 45° W. .trike. 



Thus atLittle Mecattina River outlet, Upper Laurentian, red- 

 weathering, gray hyperyte in a bed two feet thick, overlaid by 

 four feet of whitish gneiss with a dip N. 70° W.<49° and 

 strike N. 20 Q E., is seen to repose, at low tide, upon the under- 

 lying red gneiss of Lower Laurentian age. At Baie de.s Mou- 

 tons, eighteen miles north-east of this, Lower Laurentian firm, 

 coarse-gra!ih d, r< d gneisses appear, intersected by cleavage-planes 

 and fissures, and fine-grained, red, granitic veins, the older set 

 having a strike N. 47° E. and intersected by the uewer set which 

 strike N. 87° W. A fine example of a trap dyke can be seen 

 from the ocean at Schooner Bay, three miles north-east of Baie 

 des Moutous. Its strike is apparently N. 50° E, and its maxi- 

 mum thickness is six feet, diminishing to three feet. At the 

 mouth of the river St. Augustine, about fifteen miles from the 

 mainland, on L'Isle aux Sables occurs the bed of micaceous sand- 

 stone already referred to. It is tender and friable, brownish- 

 grey in colour, and lies in a synclinal with a N. 45° W. strike.. 

 Vol. VIII. e No. 2 



