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248 DR. THOMAS STERRY HUNT ON THE 
§ 84. This succession of crystalline limestones, quartzites and slates is clearly older 
than the wholly uncrystalline sandstones and shales of Lower Cambrian (Menevian) age, 
which, with their characteristic fauna, are found in close proximity. The latter strata 
appear to be in part made up of the ruins of the older schists, and in one section, beds of 
quartzite and conglomerate, believed to belong to the limestone-series, appear between the 
Menevian and the underlying Huronian strata. A mile or two away, however, the lime- 
stone-series is seen to rest upon red granitoid gneiss, regarded as Laurentian ; and was 
itself described, in the report just mentioned, as an upper member of the Laurentian 
series. The evidence above adduced shows that we have here a great series resting 
unconformably alike on Laurentian and Huronian, and at the same time wholly distinct 
from the Lower Cambrian. From these facts, and from its close resemblance to the Lower 
Taconic of Maine, and of western New England, it was in 1875, by the present writer, 
referred to the Taconic series.* 
A great mass of similar limestones and marbles, with soft micaceous schists, described 
by Murray as occurring in Newfoundland between the older gneisses and the fossiliferous 
Cambrian (Quebec group), may not improbably represent the Lower Taconice. + 
§ 85. As we go northward in the Champlain valley, the Lower Taconic, which appears, 
in southern and central Vermont, at the western base of the Green Mountains, passes 
beneath newer strata. From thence northeastward, we have no certain evidence of the 
existence of this series between the latter and the belt of crystalline strata of Huronian 
age, which may be traced along the southeast side of the St. Lawrence valley, to a point a 
little farther east than the meridian of Quebec; where the crystalline rocks disappear 
beneath the surrounding paleozoic strata. If, however, we pass westward, we find in 
Hastings county, north of the eastern extremity of Lake Ontario, a considerable area 
occupied by quarizites, conglomerates, limestones, micaceous slates and argillites, 
resembling closely those of the various Taconian areas. These strata, which rest uncon- 
formably alike upon the Laurentian and Huronian rocks of the district, are themselves 
arranged in several synclinals, with moderate dips, and are unconformably overlaid by the 
fossiliferous limestones of the Trenton; the lower members of the Champlain division 
being absent throughout this region. The conglomerates include pebbles of both of the 
underlying groups. Crystalline dolomites, constituting marbles, are found in the series, 
and above them, a mass of about 1,000 feet of fine-grained, greyish and bluish, earthy and 
somewhat schistose limestones ; the whole series being estimated at 3,800 feet. These 
rocks, which were first particularly described by Macfarlane, (then of the geological survey 
of Canada,) in 1864, were subsequently known, in the reports of the survey, as the Hastings 
series ; and were by Logan, in 1866, compared with the micaceous limestone-series of 
eastern Vermont (§81). In 1875, the writer, after an examination of the three regions, 
compared the rocks of the Hastings series with the similar rocks of southern New 
Brunswick, and of Berkshire county, and described them as Lower Taconie.f It may 
here be mentioned that areas of Montalban gneisses and micaschists occur in the vicinity 
of the Taconian rocks of Hastings county, in Ontario. 

* Proc. Bos. Soc. Nat. Hist., xvi. ; 509, and Azoic Rocks, pp. 179-180. 
+ Hunt, Amer. Jour. Sci., 1870, vol. 1. p. 86. 
{ Hunt Azoic Rocks, pp. 170-172, and p. 177. 

