Section IV., 1908. [121] Trans. R. S. C. 



VII. — Geological Cycles in the Maritime Provinces of Canada. 

 By G. F. Matthew, D.Sc, LL.D. 



(Read 26th May, 1908.) 



In an address to the Biological and Geological Section of this 

 Society delivered some years ago/ the writer outlined the result of 

 studies of the Cambrian geology of this part of Xorth America up to 

 the time when that address was written, in relation to its physical 

 geology and topography. The following paper is more limited in the 

 area treated of, but more extented as relates to geological time. It 

 treats of the Acadian region only, but it carries the history onward 

 from the earliest Geological Age of which there is a record in this 

 region, to the middle of Mesozoic Time. 



The region of Acadia, or the Maritime Provinces of Canada, is one 

 in which fossil remains give us less guidance in tracing geological rela- 

 tions than could be desired. Indeed, its foundation rocks possess three 

 terranes (or formations) in which many geologists still refuse to recog- 

 nize the presence of any organisms that can be determined from having 

 left any hard parts of the body as fossils. This debatable ground has 

 been referred by various geologists, who have studied the region, to geo- 

 logical systems from " Primary '' to Devonian. The result of the earlier 

 studies were condensed, classified and extended by the members of the 

 staff of the Geological Survey of Canada in the reports of that survey 

 of 1870 to 1889, and other works of authors for New Brunswick, and 

 of reports, etc., mainly by Messrs. H. Fletcher, E. E. Faribault, and 

 L. W. Bailey, for Nova Scotia, and by K. W. Ells, for Prince Edward 

 Island. Dr. Ells has also resurveyed southern New Brunswick in the 

 last two or three years, b^ut as I have not had a chance of testing the 

 changes made from the earlier reports, a part only of Dr. Ells's results 

 are embodied in this article. 



One cause of the difficulty attending the determining of the age 

 of the older Palaeozoic and Eozoic systems in these provinces is the 

 extreme folding and faulting which the rocks have undergone. From 

 this cause the succession is often obscured by overthrusts, or a whole 

 terrane may be overturned from base to summit, (as the Cambrian at 

 the west end of the city of St. John) , and left in such an attitude that 

 the true succession would not have been suspected had not the fossils 

 reveflJed it. 



It is not claimed that the following statement of the Physical 

 Geology of this region, in successive periods of Geological Time, is 



1 Trans. Roy. Soc. Can., Vol. X, Sec. IV, p. 3. 



