1870.] HUNT — GEOLOGY OF EASTERN NEW ENGLAND. 199 



conceived that these micaceous and argillaceous schists, often 

 holding garnets and chiastolite, were identical with those which 

 make so conspicuous a figure in the White Mountains and else- 

 where in Eastern New England, and when, in 1849, I laid before 

 the American Association at Cambridge, the results of the Geo- 

 logical Survey of Canada (Sill. Jour., II, ix, 19), suggested 

 that to the Gaspe series, as above defined, ''may perhaps be 

 referred, in part, the rocks of the White Mountains." Lesley, 

 subsequently, in 1860 (Proc. Philad. Acad. Nat. Sciences, page 

 363), adduced many reasons for believing that the rocks of these 

 might be strata of Devonian age.-^ In the large geological map 

 of Canada and the northern United States, lately published by 

 Sir William Logan, no attempt is made to delineate the geology 

 of New Hampshire, but the rocks in question, to the north of 

 the United States boundary, are represented as Upper Silurian, 

 with the exception of a belt of the Quebec group, which has been 

 recognized in that region. 



In fact the schists and gneisses of the White Mountains are 

 clearly distinct, lithologically,Trom the Laurentian, the Labradorian 

 and the Huronian, as well as from the crystalline rocks of the 

 Green Mountains, and from the fossiliferous Upper Silurian strata 

 which lie at the southwestern base of the Canadian prolongation 

 of the latter. Having thus exhausted the list of known sedimen- 

 tary groups up to this horizon, it was evident that the crystalline 

 strata of the White Mountains must be either (1) of Devonian 

 age, or (2) something newer (which was highly improbable) ; or 

 (3) must belong to a lower and hitherto unknown series. In the 

 absence of any proof, at that time, of the existence of such a 

 lower system, the first view, which referred these strata to the 

 Devonian period, was the only one admissible. 



* In this connection should be recalled the views put forth in 1846, 

 by Messrs. H. D. and "W. B. Kogers, in a paper on the Geological Age 

 of the White Mountains, (Sill. Journal, II, i, 411). They there, for the 

 first time, pointed out that the great mass of these mountains consists of 

 more or less altered sedimentary strata, which upon the evidence of sup- 

 posed organic remains they referred with some little doubt, to the Clin- 

 ton division of the Upper Silurian. In 1847, however, they announced 

 that the supposed fossils, on which this identification had been founded, 

 were not really such, (Sill. Jom-nal, II, v, 116). Future explorers may,' 

 it is hoped, be more successful, and yet discover among the strata of the 

 White Mountains evidences of organic life, probably of primordial 

 Silurian age. 



