PART OF THE PROVINCE OF QUEBEC. 107 



tlie rocks of the overlying and apparently newer series either contained no fossils such as 

 might at that time determine their true age, or yielded a series of peculiar forms, prin- 

 cipally of graptolites whose exact position in the geological scale was so undeterminable 

 as to render them of comparatively little value iu fixing accurate horizons, tended still 

 more to confuse the question. 



Acting then upon the supposed stratigraphical sequence of formations, the rocks east 

 of the St. Lawrence were held to form a gradually ascending series from the Hudson 

 River to the Devonian, the fossiliferous strata of the latter, along with the Upper Silurian, 

 being found at several points far inland, resting upon the beds which were held to over- 

 lie in regular sequence the Hudson Eiver formation, and thus the structure, had it not 

 been complicated by faults and overturns whose importance was not at that time recog- 

 nized, was an apparently simple one. At many points the superposition of the red and 

 green slate series was evident enough, not only near the city of Quebec, but hundreds of 

 miles to the east, where, on the north side of the peninsula of Grasi^c, for a long distance, 

 the relative positions of the two series as just stated were easily seen both along the beach 

 and a short distance inland, while to the south, towards the Vermont boundary, a like 

 structure and succession was disclosed. 



The rocks of the central mountainous area of Quebec, which in part constitute the 

 extension into Canada of the G-reen Mountain range of Vermont, presented great difli- 

 culties. Their position was not clear at that time or for many years after. In some places 

 these consisted of greenish, greyish and black stratified rocks, occasionally with purple- 

 tinted beds and with bands of sandstone and great areas of quartzite and dioritic rocks. 

 In colour these resembled somewhat the beds near the St. Lawrence, but in texture they 

 differed widely, being for the mo^ part highly schistose and mctamorphic, containing 

 very often mica, talc or chlorite, while some of the heavy masses of diorite presented iu 

 the field a very strong resemblance to a highly altered quartzose sandstone. The infer- 

 ence was adopted therefrom iu the earliest stage of the study of this section that these 

 rocks were not only metamorphio, but that they were the altered equivalents of the fossil- 

 iferous Hudson River series, or directly succeeding sediments of the St. Lawrence area, 

 and that the metamorphism was due to the great changes which had taken place during 

 the period of mountain-making. This view, adopted by the Canadian geologists, was 

 practically that accepted by most geologists in the United States, where the extension of 

 these rocks had been studied in Vermont and western Massachusetts, and thus down to 

 the year 1860 the view was general that all these highly crystalline rocks were of Upper 

 Hudson lîiver age, the fossiliferous character of which had been completely obliterated 

 by the great amount of metamorphism to which they had been subjected.' 



But this view of the structure and age of this great series was shortly to be largely 

 modified. In 185Y-58 certain beds of slates and limestone, with luasses of limestone con- 

 glomerates, which were developed in the town of Levis, opposite Quebec, were more 

 carefully examined by the officers of the Geological Survey. They were found to be 

 wonderfully rich in fossil remains, not only of the graptolites which had already been 

 obtained and examined by Prof. Jas. Hall, but of other forms as well, including brachio- 

 pods, trilobites, cephalapods, etc., of which a very large collection was obtained. These 

 were carefully examined by the late Mr. E. Billings, and among them were found many 

 forms which clearly indicated that the containing beds belonged to a much lower horizon 



