216 



RECORD OP^ SCIENCE FOR 1886. 



glaciatiou. An accouut is given of glaciers on Mounts Shasta, Tacoina, 

 etc., quoted from various observers.* 



ROCKY MOUNTAINS, ETC. 



81. G. M. Dawson, in a paper on a portion of the Canadian Eocky 

 Mountains, gives a description of the relation of the various ranges 

 and the geologic relations and structure along some of the routes across 

 them. It is found that the lowest rocks consist of over 11,000 feet of 

 quartzites, slates, and shales, with occasional" beds of limestone and 

 lava flows, and present scanty fossil evidence that they are of Middle 

 Cambrian age in the upper part, but otherwise similar to the quartzites 

 and schists of the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, and the Chuar and 

 Grand Canon groups of Arizona. Overlying these unconformably is a 

 limestone series of Devonian and Carboniferous age, which occasionally 

 holds quartzites, and may prove in the westernmost parts of the range 

 to pass down into Silurian or Cambrio-Silurian. Triassic or Permo- 

 Triassic red sandstones with traps appear in some places near the 

 forty-ninth parallel, and are overlain by 7,000 feet of shales and sand- 

 stones, with coal-beds, which bear a characteristic early Cretaceous or 

 Cretaceo-Jurassic flora, which have been named the Kootanie series. 

 Overlying them, generally with slight unconformity, lie remnants of 

 Middle and Upper Cretaceous, with coal-beds and trap-sheets. The 

 following table is given of the beds above the Kootanie series : 



The great mountain -building uplift was in the early Tertiary, and the 

 beds were then thrown into SSB. and I^NE. folds, often close and 

 overturned in what is now the mountain district; an eastern belt about 

 50 miles in width forming the foot-hills, being less contorted, and pre- 

 serving the younger beds.t 



82. In the same report an account is given of the Bow Kiver Valley 

 beds of Kootanie anthracite, | and they are also described by Merritt 



* U. S. Geol. Survey, Fifth Annual Report, pp. 303-355, and pis, 

 t Canada Geol. Survey. Annual Report for 1835, B, and abstract in Can. Record 

 Sci., vol. 3, pp. 285-301. 

 t Ibid, pp. 126-127. 



