MANITOBA AND THE NORTHWEST. 95 - 
hypothesis, represent beds below the Pierre, referable to the Belly River series or to the 
Niobrara. Not having at present any accurate knowledge of the character of the forma- 
tion underlying the Pierre in this district, and in the unfortunate absence of specimens, 
we are are unable exactly to correlate it. A small specimen from layer 13 consists of buff 
or pale-grey shale, with small calcareous veins or intercalations. The lowest bed, of 
which also a specimen is to hand, was penetrated for a thickness of 70 feet, and is a dark, 
soft shale, or shaly clay, nearly black in colour, and quite plastic when wet. Under the 
microscope this material is found, besides flocculent argillaceous matter, to contain a 
considerable proportion of very fine, rather angular, quartz sand of uniform grain. It is 
not improbable that this represents the highest part of the Benton shales. Mr. Swan 
notes that no loose sand or gravel was met with in this well. In the sandstone No. 9, 
a flow of salt water was encountered. This is not described as being a brine, and may 
probably have been contaminated with sulphates, like most of the waters flowing from 
the Cretaceous rocks of the West. A small quantity of gas was met with under layer 
No. 11, but its nature is not stated. 
VII.—Borine at LANGEVIN STATION. 
This place is on the line of the Canadian Pacific Railway, thirty-five miles west of 
Medicine Hat, at an elevation of 2,471 feet above sea-level. No natural exposures occur in 
the immediate vicinity or nearer than those on the Bow River, but from a consideration of 
these, the relative elevations and other circumstances, the rocks underlying the drift at 
this place have been mapped ' as those of the Belly River series, and are probably near the 
summit of the lower or yellowish and banded portion of this series. The boring would 
appear in fact to be near the summit of a wide, diffuse anticlinal which, with a general 
north-east and south-west direction, is here crossed by the line of railway. A depth 
of 1,400 feet was reached, and, as the lower rocks penetrated must belong to an horizon 
below that of any seen at the surface in the entire district, a good section would be of excep- 
tional interest. Unfortunately, specimens of the rocks passed through were not preserved. 
Two borings were actually made, the first having been put down 1,155 feet in 1883, when 
it was abandoned in consequence of the ignition of a heavy flow of combustible gas, 
which resulted in the destruction of the derrick, etc., at the surface. In boring the second 
hole, the gas from the first was used to fire the boiler of the engine. The two wells were sunk 
by different men, and perhaps partly on account of carelessness in keeping the log, but 
largely, no doubt, from difference of nomenclature used in describing the materials, the 
records do not agree as closely as might be expected. It is often very difficult, even in natural 
exposures of the Belly River rocks, to decide, in measuring a section, where to draw the 
line between different layers—a circumstance arising from their close resemblance in texture 
and the blending in colours of one bed with another. Itis therefore not remarkable that those 
in charge of the borings have differed so much in their nomenclature and the thickness 
assigned to the various strata. The section here given is that met with in the first hole, 
as obtained by Mr. R. G. McConnell of the Geological Survey, who visited Langevin spe- 

' See geological map accompanying Report C, Report of Progress Geol. Survey, 1882-84. 
