[ells] notes on the MINERAL FUEL SUPPLY OF CANADA 269 



without doubt destined in a few years to become a still more important 

 national asset as a source of heat, light and power. 



More especially will this be the case in those provinces in which the 

 deposits of peat are large and of good quality and the distances from the 

 coal centres great. These conditions apply to considerable portions of 

 Ontario and Quebec to which the coal-fields of Nova Scotia should na- 

 turally furnish the fuel supply; as also to eastern Manitoba which is 

 naturally dependent on the coals from the eastern slopes of 

 the Eocky mountains or on the lignites of the great plains. 

 As regards those provinces which contain an available fuel 

 supply in coial the need of utilizing the peat deposits 

 is probably at present not so great as to warrant the outlay of 

 capita] necessary for the erection of costly plants required for the manu- 

 facture of compressed peat fuel. In the following pages the distri- 

 bution of the several varieties of fossil or mineral fuel, above referred to, 

 will be indicated. 



If we consider the geological horizons of the several coal deposits- 

 found in Canada ît will be seen that these embrace a wide range, extend- 

 ing from the Devonian upward into the Tertiary. Of the other fuels, 

 some of them range downward in the geological scale to our lowest rocks, 

 anthraxolite, which is a form of carl)on, being found in those of Huronian 

 and Cambrian age. The geological horizons of the workable coals are how- 

 ever rather more limited, although even here the early ideas that the 

 economic deposits of coal belonged especially to the Carboniferous time 

 have been long since set aside, by the fact that much of the highest grade 

 coals of the west or Pacific division, which compare most favourably with 

 bituminous coals of the Atlantic slope, belong to comparatively recent 

 rocks and extend through the Cretaceous to the middle Tertiary. These 

 western coals present several varieties in the same field, the difference 

 being due apparently to various degrees of alteration of the original de- 

 posit of carbonaceous matter. 



Anthraxolite is more closely related to the rock oils or petroleums 

 than to the true coals. It is found at a number of points in Canada 

 and at widely separated horizons ; and while not as yet materially increas- 

 ing our fuel supply, is of interest both to the mineralogist and geo- 

 logist. In its mode of occurrence it difi'ers entirely from coal, in that àt 

 is always found in the form of veins which traverse strata of different 

 ages instead of occurring as bedded deposits. From its presence in 

 rocks of the Laurentian and Huronian systems as well as in the Cam- 

 brian and Silurian formations, it would, on the hypothesis that all bi- 

 tuminous substances are of organic origin, indicate that life, in some 

 form, existed in the remotest periods of the earth's history. So also the 



