No. 1.] GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 71 



feet from tlie surface, near tlie town of Goderich, in Ontario. As 

 regards its geological position, it was there shewn from the results 

 of the boring that the Onondaga formation attains in that region 

 a thickness of about 1,000 feet, of which the lower 200 feet con- 

 sists of reddish and bluish shales, including beds of gypsum, and 

 near the base a layer of rock salt, which in the Goderich well was 

 said to have a thickness of about forty feet, including some layers 

 of blue clay. From this depth there was obtained, by pumping, 

 a saturated brine, my analysis of which was given. Attention 

 was in this Report called both to the strength and the remarkable 

 purity of the brine, and comparative results were given to show 

 its great superiority over the brines of Saginaw in Michigan, and 

 of Syracuse in New York. A table showing the strengths of 

 brines of different specific gravities, and the number of gallons 

 required for a bushel of salt, was also given in this connection. 

 It is deemed advisable, however, to give in the present Report a 

 more extended table of the same kind, which is reprinted from 

 Professor Alex. Winchell's Report on the Geology of Michigan, 

 published in 1861. 



Since the publication of that Report, the well then described, 

 which belongs to the Goderich Company, has been constantly 

 pumped, and large quantities of salt have been manufactured from 

 the brine. Encouraged by the success of this well, several other 

 boriogs have been sunk in the immediate vicinity, and are yield- 

 ing brines like the first one. The record of all these wells is 

 essentially the same as that of the first. The presence of a 

 stratum of rock-salt has been established by the grains of salt 

 brought up by the sand pump from the borings. In the course 

 of 1867 Mr. Ransford sunk a well at Clinton, thirteen miles to 

 the south-east of Goderich, on the line of the Bufi"alo and Lake 

 Huron railway, and was rewarded by the discovery of the salt- 

 bearing stratum, offering, it is said, a thickness of sixteen feet of 

 rock-salt. The depth of this well is 1,180 feet, and the greater 

 thickness of rock overlying the salt at Clinton is due to the south- 

 eastward dip of the strata ; from which it results that the summit 

 of the Onondaga formation, which appears at the surface at God- 

 erich, is at Clinton covered by about 200 feet of the Corniferous 

 limestone. This overlying formation occupies, to the north of 

 Goderich, a broad triangular area extending north-eastward 

 nearly forty miles, and bounded to the nort-east and north-west 

 by the out-crop of the underlying Onondaga formation. 



