188 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
V.—The Cordilleran or British Columbia Region, which extends 
across the Rocky mountain region of Canada, from the foot-hills to the 
Pacific ocean, and includes the great Cordilleran belt from the 49th 
parallel to Alaska. 
The following table gives the list of geological systems recognized 
in Canada: 
Quaternary. 
Tertiary. 
Cretaceous. 
Jurassic. 
Triassic. 
Permian. 
Carboniferous. 
Devonian. 
Silurian. 
Ordovician. 
Cambrian. 
Huronian. 
Laurentian. 
In dealing with the classification of the various formations of Can- 
ada included in the above systems and occurring in the five regions 
afore-mentioned the writer has been compelled to affix provisional for- 
mational names to various series of sedimentary rocks which have not 
as yet received any designation. He deems it, however, a case of dire 
necessity in this case, inasmuch as it is impossible to classify geological 
horizons or sub-divisions in the strata of the earth’s crust, as developed 
in Canada, according to the latest and most approved methods and in 
keeping with the classification of other geological formations in the same 
systems in other parts of the world, without formational names. There 
are horizons and formations in Canada which are known only in terms 
descriptive of their lithological or paleontological characters, combined 
in some cases with their economic relations, and these are not as a rule 
acceptable as geological terms of value in nomenclature. 
THE LAURENTIAN SYSTEM. 
Of the three million six hundred and sixteen thousand nine hund- ~ 
red and eighty square miles of territory in British North America, nearly 
two-thirds of this area belongs to the Archean, which term is used to 
embrace both the rocks of the Laurentian and those of the Huronian 
systems. The Laurentian constitutes the fundamental or older series 
in the Archean. 

