^^0. 2.] DAWSON — IRON ORES OF NOVA SCOTIA. 131 



The ore-bed where most largely developed attains a thickuess 

 of about thirty feet, and in places where it has been opened up 

 by exploratory works, it has been found to afford from ten to 

 twenty feet in thickness of good ore. This ore is a red hematite, 

 sometimes compact and laminated, but more frequently of an 

 oolitic character occasioned by the arrangement of the peroxide 

 of iron in minute concretions enveloping grains of sand. By the 

 increase of these silicious grains it passes in the poorer portions 

 into a sort of ferrui2;inous sandstone. Similar beds of fossiliferous 

 ore are well known to occur in the Clinton group of New York 

 and Pennsylvania, and Prof. Hall informs me that they are 

 found also in the Lower Helderberg series of New York. 



AloQg the different lines of outcrop above referred to, this bed 

 has been traced for several miles, and being of a hard and resist- 

 ing character, it rises into some of the higher elevations of the 

 country. Though not one of the richest ores of the district, its 

 great quantity and accessibility render it highly important for 

 practical purposes. The analyses made of it show a percentage 

 of metal varying from 43 to 54 per cent. The foreign matter is 

 principally 8ilica, and the proportions of Phosphorus and Sulphur 

 are small — one of the specimens analyzed affording none wdiatever, 

 another .22 Phosphoric Acid and .29 Sulphur. These analyses 

 were made at the instance of Mr. E. A. Prentice, dow oroanizins: 

 a company to work this and other deposits in the district. The 

 principal exposures of this bed are distant only twelve miles from 

 -the great collieries of the East River of Pictou, and less than 

 ten miles from the Pictou and Halifax Railway. This deposit 

 Tvas first described by Mr. R. Brown in Haliburton's History of 

 Nova Scotia, 1829, and subsequently by the writer in Acadian 

 Geology. More recently exploratory works have been carried on 

 and a practical report made by Mr. Gr. M. Dawson, Associate 

 of the School of Mines, London ; and the bed has been traced and 

 collections of its fossils made by Mr. D. Fraser of Springville. 



(2) Hematite and Magnetic Iwn of Nictaux and Moose River. 



This deposit takes us to the other extremity of Nova Scotia. 

 and brings us a stage higher in geological time, or to the period 

 of the Oriskany Sandstone. It would indeed appear that the 

 conditions of ore-deposit so marked in Eastern Nova Scotia in 

 the upper Silurian, were continued in the western part of the 

 Province into the Devonian. In many specimens of the Nictaux 



