No. 5. I NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 287 



it is bounded on the north by those oldest foldings of the crust 

 of the earth which constitute the Laurentian hills, and ou the 

 south by the somewhat less ancient wrinklings which have pro- 

 duced the hills of the Eastern Townships and the Green Moun- 

 tains. The mountain itself is an igneous or volcanic mass, rising 

 through rocks of the Hudson River or Cincinnati group, which 

 are seen on its flanks, and consisting of dense crystalline material 

 such as that which forms the deeper and hidden part of modern 

 volcanoes, but which has here been laid bare by the removal of 

 the lighter scoriaceous and tufaceous matter which once covered 

 it. The date of the activity of these Lower Canadian volcanoes 

 is far back in geological time. They were probably cooled out 

 before the close of the Silurian age, and since that time they 

 have been subjected to the denuding action of the atmosphere 

 .aud its waters, and more than once to the waves and currents of 

 the ocean. The last known residuum of the sea in the Lower 

 Canadian plain is evidenced by the clays and s mds of Pleisto- 

 cene date, and holding marine shells, scattered over its surface ; 

 and also by the occurrence ou this mountain, at a height of 1100 

 feet above the sea, of water-borne Laurentian boulders from the 

 Laureutide hills to the north, specimens of which may be col- 

 lected ou the path leading to the summit. Any one viewing 

 from the present standpoint the wide aud low valley of the St. 

 Lawrence and the blue Laurentian hills, at least fifty miles dis- 

 tant, from which these stones must have been borne (aud they 

 probably came from much greater distances than the neares- 

 margin of the Laurentian), must be convinced that no other 

 means than those of floatage by water could have carried them 

 so far. We are thus carried back to that phase of the so-called 

 glacial period when Beloeil was a mere rock in the sea, and fields 

 and bergs of ice were drifting against it, borne on by the north- 

 easterly Arctic curreuts, from the distant Laurentian hills, then 

 little elevated above the sea, and probably for the most part 

 snow-clad. 



We are reminded by these geological facts of the 'treasures 

 that exist in the rocks and soils which are overlooked from this 

 summit, — the iron, lead, plumbago and phosphates of the Lau- 

 rentian range ; the vast expanse of fertile soil in those fields that 

 stretch almost interminably over the plain of the St. Lawrence ; 

 the copper, the gold, the antimony, the iron, the slates, the 

 marbles of the southern hills. This is a rich inheritance of 



