58 NOVA SCOTIAN GEOLOGY—HONEYMAN 
by my own research, into a lower group of black slate and trap- 
pean shale, a middle group of sandstone, and a thin upper group 
of very black shale, which in North Wales is rich in fossils.” 
“Of these formations we have only to deal with the lower, 
for in that only, at present, are the gold veins worked in the dis- 
trict, but the gold is not confined to these lower members, for 
the productive mine at Castell Carn Dochan is in much higher 
rocks. Indeed it is at the junction of this formation with the 
underlying Cambrian grits (quartzites) that the principal bear- 
ing lodes are found.” Pp. 1, 2. 
SALTER’S description of the Barmouth rocks might with very 
little change be employed in describing our quartzites (grits) and 
argillites the only difference existing between the English series 
and our own seems to be accidental. Thetv metamorphism may 
have taken place in Upper Cambrian time, which seems to cor- 
respond with our Lower Silurian which is meant to include the 
Primordial of Saint John, N. B., the Lower Lingula Flags and the 
Mira ridge, C. B., Olenus and Agnostus, Upper Lingula Flags of 
SALTER’S Appendix to Ramsay’s Geology formation of North 
Wales. 
ARCHAO-SILURIAN (LOWER). 
This is a term which I use to denote the granites of the 
series. At Nictaux these were considered to be igneous rocks of 
Devonian age and were considered as having so metamorphosed 
the soe Devonian fossiliferous rocks, as to have converted 
them into gneissoid rocks. The inclusion of portions of these 
eneissoid rocks was also regarded as conclusive evidence of 
the igneous origin of the granite. The old view is that the 
granite is of igneous origin and that it is an intrusive rock, 
the new and orthodox view is that granites are generally meta- 
morphic rocks, and not necessarily intrusive rocks, and that 
remetamorphism may account for the apparent fusion and intru- 
sion. At Nictaux I feund, first that the supposed Devonian rocks 
having fossils are of Middle Silurian age, second that the rocks by 
which they are intruded and metamorphosed are igneous diorites; 
hird that in positions where granite and the fossiliferous rocks 
were in actual contact, the latter were very little metamorphosed 
and certainly not converted into gneissoid rocks. The granite 
