146 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
distance gradually pass into a true syenite. The slates, including some 
thin bands of quartzite, as exposed at this point, have a breadth of 
about 300 feet, and the fossil-bearing layers, as far as could be ascer- 
tained, are confined to its lower or southern portion, and have a 
thickness of not more than six inches. They are accompanied by what 
are apparently worm-burrows, and Dr. G. F. Matthew has since observed 
in them obscure remains of trilobites. At a distance of about half a mile 
however, corresponding to the mill-pond connected with Murchie’s mill, 
very similar black slates, again including bands of quartzite, come once 
more into view, and from this point, for a distance of over a mile across 
the measures, exposures of such rocks, mainly black but sometimes 
greenish slates, may be seen in the bluffs forming the left bank of Eel 
river, as well as in the nearly flat and partially cleared plateau above. 
They are everywhere inclined at high angles, and in places give evidence 
of violent twisting, while ordinary cleavage is often replaced by a 
tendency to break into pyramidal or splintery blocks, often several 
feet in length. At a point two miles and a half below Benton, or one 
and a half below Murchie’s mills, they give place to felspathic grits 
and conglomerates, while one mile further in the same direction, at 
the Eel River Falls, are heavy masses of slate conglomerate. These 
latter are supposed to be the northern boundary of a basin of Silurian 
rocks, including the fossiliferous slates of this age observed by Mr. 
Wilson, six miles north of Canterbury station, and which will be further 
referred to in the sequel. At several points in the dark slates, and at 
distances of a mile or more from the locality just noted at Benton, 
similar remains of Dictyonema have been observed, while in some of 
the sections along the track of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which 
here follows the course of Kel river somewhat closely, the slates are 
found to contain dark phosphatic films which simulate the forms of 
Obollelloid shells. There would seem to be no doubt that the whole 
series of black slates and their associated quartzites, with possibly the 
coarser beds with which the section terminates, are of Cambrian age, 
though occupying a relatively high position in that system, and approxi- 
mating to the age of the fossiliferous Ordovician strata of the Becca- 
guimic valley. 
In attempting to trace the black Cambrian slates upon their 
strike to the northeastward, it was found that even at a very short 
distance, a marked change in the character of the exposed strata was 
to be met, the black slates apparently passing out of view and being 
replaced by heavy beds of white weathering quartzite with comparatively 
little slate, and that of a lighter colour. It would therefore seem that 
the black slates are cut off by a fault along their line of contact with 

