[bailey-mattHew] new BRUNSWICK GEOLOGY 109 



but where these are absent, as in the case of the Coastal rocks, the 

 only data for determination are their Hthological characters, which, as 

 is well known, may easily lead to error. It can only be said that 

 they are probably Pre-Cambrian and that in their main features they 

 nearly resemble the Pre-Cambrian rocks of the Eastern Townships of 

 Quebec. Like the latter they are copper bearing at many points, 

 and with similar beds occurring along the coast west of St. John, 

 contain nearly all the localities in New Brunswick in which ores of 

 that metal have been obtained. They are highly disturbed and meta- 

 morphosed and towards their eastward extremity hold a considerable 

 batholith of granite. Though holding some beds of limestone they 

 have as yet revealed no fossils, and their true position is still one of 

 the unsolved problems of New Brunswick geology. 



(7) We may now consider some of the areas, more or less remote 

 from St. John, which, in the Geological Survey Map, are represented 

 as Pre-Cambrian, but in which the evidences for such reference are 

 less direct and convincing than in the district already discussed. 



One of these is a considerable tract of more or less altered rocks 

 found near the border of Kings and Queens counties, and which 

 presents great diversity of Hthological character. It would be im- 

 possible and probably useless to discuss these here in detail — (such 

 details are given in the published Geological Survey Report for 1871) 

 but it may suffice to say that while a portion of them, largely volcanic, 

 lithologically resemble those of the Coldbrook group as seen in St. 

 John County, embracing porphyritic felsites qt rhyolites and diorites, 

 more or less vesicular, other portions more nearly resemble the so- 

 called Coastal rocks, embracing greenish and purplish chloritic and 

 felspathic schists, argillites of various colors, felsite breccias and espec- 

 ially a grey rock resembling granite in aspect and composition but 

 which is evidently clastic and recomposed. Nothing bearing any 

 resemblance to the limestone-quartzite series of St. John is met with. 

 At many points Upper Silurian strata carrying fossils rest upon the 

 supposed Huronian strata unconformably, proving the Pre-Silurian 

 age of the latter, and in places beds of undoubted Cambrian rocks are 

 found not far removed from these, but no cases of actual super- 

 position have as yet been observed. We can only say that the facts 

 now on hand strongly favor the idea that the rocks under debate are 

 Pre-Cambrian, with basins of Silurian slates, but much careful work 

 is needed before all the intricacies of this complex region can be 

 regarded as satisfactorily settled. 



The next group of supposed Archean sediments to which reference 

 must be made is that which, lying mainly between the parallel lake- 

 like expansions of the St. John river, known respectively as the Long 



