REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 19 



GEOLOGICAL EXPLORATION IN THE CANADIAN ROCKIES. 



Geological field work in the Canadian Rocky Mountains was con- 

 tinued by your secretary during the field season of 1919, with the 

 following objects in view: (1) The discovery of an unmetamor- 

 phosed, undisturbed section of the Upper Cambrian formations north 

 of the Canadian Pacific Railway; and (2) the collection of fossils 

 to determine the various formations and to correlate them with the 

 Upper Cambrian formations elsewhere. The region selected for 

 examination was the area about Glacier Lake, which was reached 

 through Bow Pass, down the Mistaya Creek to the Saskatchewan 

 River, and thence up to the headwaters of the Middle Fork. 



The geological section measured is of such interest that I will de- 

 scribe it briefly. The rocks exposed in the highest cliffs of Mount 

 Forbes and Mons Peak belong to the great Carboniferous system of 

 rocks of this region. Below this series is a belt 1,000 feet or more 

 in thickness comprising the Devonian rocks, beneath which are the 

 strata of the Sarbach formation of the Ordovician system. Under 

 these again are the five formations of the Upper Cambrian series, and 

 at one place near Mount Murchison is a low ridge formed of strata 

 of Middle Cambrian age. 



Special attention was given to the glaciers of which there are many 

 fine examples in the region. Beautiful photographs of some of these 

 were obtained, one showing a complete glacier from its neve to its 

 foot. A preliminary examination of the fossils in the formations 

 studied correlates them with the Upper Cambrian formations of 

 Wisconsin and Minnesota and the Upper Cambrian section in south- 

 ern Idaho, and to a lesser extent with that of the central belt of 

 Pennsylvania. 



PALEONTOLOGICAL FIELD WORK. 



Two short field trips were taken during the year by Dr. R. S. Bass- 

 ler, curator of paleontology, for the purpose of securing certain 

 specimens of fossils and rocks required for the Museum exhibition 

 series. During the previous year some excellent exhibition specimens 

 had been located in southeastern Indiana, but owing to the iinpos- 

 sibilty of securing help to get them to a freight station, it had been 

 necessary to leave them. This year, conditions being the same, they 

 were carefully wrapped in burlap and padded with a quantity of 

 weeds and laboriously dragged along the rails to the nearest station. 

 The same method was used in transporting to a station the specimens 

 found this year along a creek in the same locality, where heavy spring 

 freshets had uncovered some richly fossiliferous layers of rock. One 

 of these specimens, a slab several feet in length and width, was 

 crowded with impressions of the branching fossil seaweed Burtho- 

 trephis, and with excellent examples of the dumb-bell seaweed Ar- 



