QUEBEC GROUP IN GEOLOGY. 5 
geological field work commenced on the British survey in 1845 under Sir Henry T. de la 
Beche, the originator of all accurate and systematic geological surveying. My field of 
labour under this accomplished master for the following eight years was chiefly amongst 
the Paleeozoic and Older Crystalline rocks of North Wales, and the bordering western coun- 
ties of England. 
In 1852 I was selected by Sir Henry T. de la Beche, and sent by the Secretary of State 
for the Colonies, to commence the Geological Survey of the Colony of Victoria, Australia. 
There, in the auriferous rocks of that distant land, I thought I recognized my old friends of 
North Wales, and was not long in finding evidence of their being so, in an abundant and 
familiar Cambrian and Silurian fauna, up to that date unknown in the southern hemisphere. 
My labours amongst the Paleozoic rocks of Australia were then continued without inter- 
mission for sixteen years, or up to the date, 1869, when Sir William requested me to take 
up the work in Canada. 
Thus, when in 1876, as already stated, I commenced to investigate the structure of the 
Quebee Group, I did so with thirty-one year’s experience in stratigraphical work chiefly 
among the ancient formations in Europe, Australia and America, an amount of experience 
of Palæozic and Archean geology in time and space which probably no other geologist on 
the Continent could claim, Sir William Logan, himself, not excepted. Besides this accumu- 
lated experience, the great and invaluable store of facts gathered and recorded by my 
predecessor, or under his direction, was at my disposal, rendering the investigation a com- 
paratively easy task ;.and I must here state my conviction that, had Sir William been able 
to personally examine the details of the structure over the whole area, he could hardly have 
failed to see the impossibility of maintaining the theoretical subdivisions of the Quebec 
Group. And we must not forget that the distribution of the formations composing it, as 
depicted on the map, though endorsed by Sir William, is not the result of his own personal 
work, but almost entirely of that of his assistants, who at the time were really without 
experience or training in stratigraphical work among metamorphic and highly disturbed 
formations, such as those of Eastern Canada, and who, haying no experience to guide them, 
appear to have done all that perseverance and honest hard work in a very difficult country 
could accomplish in elaborating and representing the opinions of others. 
On the first point enumerated the evidence is, I consider, plain and unmistakable, 
indicating that the fossiliferous portions of the “ Quebec Group ” are, as a whole, perfectly 
distinct from and newer than those which make up the subcrystalline belt of the South- 
east. 
The precise dividing line between these two groups of strata is not easily traced, but 
I have endeayoured to indicate it on the map exhibited, and this line will be found to cor- 
respond very closely with that given by Sir William Logan, page 26-28 of his report for 
1847-48, as the south-eastern limit of the space occupied by what he then called the dark- 
coloured slates and limestones. Of this area and its limit he says: “The belt has been 
traced from the Province line, with some interruptions to the township of Arthabaska and 
beyond it.” And again, “ The eastern limit of the space they thus occupy in this part, after 
crossing the township of St. Armand, in which it keeps about a mile to the westward of 
Frelighsburgh, enters the township of Durham at the south-west corner ; traversing this 
* township diagonally, and that of Farnham by Gale Mountain, it enters Shefford at the 
