48 BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



Most of our greater heights are of hills composed of very hard, 

 intrusive rocks, the only kinds which have been able to withstand 

 the long erosion which New Brunswick has suffered, and the awful 

 battering which it received in the glacial period. They are either of 

 granite, as in the higher Bald Mountain group, the Cow Mountains, 

 Bald Mountain (Queens), Mount Pleasant, etc., or else of trap (Dolerite 

 and Diorite), as in Squaw Cap,* the Blue Mountains, Moose Mountain, 

 etc. The trap mountains are more abrupt and isolated than those of 

 granite, both because they are intruded in smaller masses, and also, 

 perhaps, because they are newer and less eroded, as well as harder. 

 New Brunswick owes most of its bold and beautiful scenery to these 

 intrusive rocks ; and flat and tame indeed would much of its surface 

 be were it not for them. Some heights occur in the hard pre Cambrian 

 rocks, as in Bald Mountain, and others near Nictor, and those along 

 the Shepody Road in Kings and St. John. Some appear to be in much 

 softer rocks, as Shepody Mountain, Green River Mountain, etc., though 

 none of these are of great height. Possibly some of them are protected 

 by local caps of trap, as in Chamcook. 



The heights of New Brunswick will not be completely nor accurately 

 known until a unified topographical survey of the entire province has 

 been made ; and this, because of its great expense, will be long in 

 coming. In the meantime, there is here offered, to those of us who 

 enjoy the pleasures of the chase, the opportunity to pursue, to our 

 complete content, that most elusive and alluring of all great game, new, 

 hard facts — in this case all the more charming since they must be 

 sought through the hardships of the northern wilderness. The deter- 

 mination of our principal heights is a fine problem for young lSew 

 Brunswickers.f 



The heights recorded for the province have been taken above various 

 datum lines. A single datum was wanting, but this has recently been 

 established, by the calculation of mean tide level at St. John, by Mr. 

 E.T. P. Shewen,* and no doubt future measurements will all be referred 

 to it. 



* The Geological Survey map colors it as composed of Upper Silurian rocks, but 1 found 

 it to be made of the same intrusive, igneous rocks as compose Sugar Loaf and the other 

 heights in that vicinity, and the red color on the map should be extended southwest to 

 include them. Probably the surveyors did not visit them, and were deceived by the name 

 Slate and by local descriptions. The rock breaks up into Mat, somewhat slaty, pieces. 



tTwo observers working from the railroad levels with good barometers, one remaining 

 at base level to check the other, Could do much in summer excursions Or a long line of 

 levels could be carried across country by two parties with good aneroids— or. better, mer- 

 curial barometers one going ahead a few miles to a new station, while the other remained 

 as a check for weather; the latter then coming up, while the former was fixed as a check. 

 This would establish a line of stations in which, supposing the instruments to work together, 

 the only source of error would be the difference iu weather pressure between tin' two 

 stations, which would be the less the nearer the stations were together. 



t See this Bulletin, later page. 



