8 DE. EOBEET BELL : 



Talents of the type series." It has not been asserted that all Huronian rocks are the 

 equivalents of the particular part of the system which Prof. Irving calls " the type series," 

 nor is it necessary that they shoiild be, in order that they be still Huronian. He goes on 

 to say that " w^ith most, if not all, of those vpho have attempted those distant correlations, 

 there has prevailed a most singular misapprehension as to the real natiire of the type or 

 original series," forgetting all the time that the crystalline schists were originally defined 

 to be as typical of the Hnronian as the quartzite portions which he has set apart as the 

 type. He appears to assume that he alone can be right in this matter, and that all other 

 geologists are wrong, including the founders of the system. " For this misconception," 

 he says, " Dr. T. S. Hunt seems mainly to be responsible." I do not see that Dr. Hunt has 

 much to apologize for in this regard. It was he who first gave the name Huronian, and 

 he probably knows what he intended that name to mean. After denying that the 

 Huronian of the north shore of Lake Superior can be correlated with that of the north 

 shore of Lake Huron, Prof. Irving presumes that the latter is nevertheless connected in 

 some way with the Huronian of Marquette, etc., on the south shore of Lake Superior. 

 He says : — " There is good reason to believe that in the region which stretches from the 

 north shore of Lake Huron to the Mississippi River, we are dealing with one geological 

 basin, so far as the rocks which I take to be the equivalents of the type Huronian are 

 concerned ; in other words, there is good reason to believe that all of these areas were 

 once connected, the connections having been removed by erosion." But why this basin 

 should have shown a preference for United States territory at that early period of the 

 earth's history is not pointed out. It would appear that the rocks of the same geological 

 basin on the British side of Lake Superior were expressly excluded, although naturally 

 belonging to it. Moreover the Huronian rocks of the soiith shore of Lake Superior are 

 separated by a great interval of newer strata from those of the north shore of Lake Huron, 

 and there is not a particle of evidence to show that they are connected with one another 

 any more than either of them may be with Huronian areas in other directions. 



In 1859, 1 visited the Marquette region in company with Mr. Murray of the Canadian 

 Survey, and again alone in 1886, and both of us considered them to be essentially the 

 same as the Huronian of the Canadian side of the great lakes. They resemble more 

 closely the varieties of Huronian rocks which prevail on the north side of Lake Superior 

 than those met with to the north of Lake Huron. The granites and syenites are found 

 cutting, or at all events lying in the midst of, both the schistose and the quartzose 

 portions of the Huronian. In my various reports on the subject, I have shown that the 

 commonest positions of these rocks is towards the edges of the Huronian areas. It is a 

 remarkable fact that in the conglomerates of all parts of the Huronian System, both geo- 

 graphically and stratigraphically, pebbles and boulders of granite and syenite of all 

 shades of red and grey are very abundant, while those of gneiss are either scarce or alto- 

 gether absent. Prof. Irving speaks of " basal conglomerates " as if rocks of this kind began 

 at one known horizon which separates his Huronian from the crystalline schists, and 

 which he supposes lie entirely below it. This, however, is not the case. On the con- 

 trary, they are found interstratified with the schistose, as well as the more massive por- 

 tions and at all horizons of the series. Among the more southern of the Canadian 

 Huronian areas, for example, they are described in our reports as abundant in those of 

 Michipicoten, the Pic, Lake of the "Woods, and Red Lake. The finest examples of ordinary 



