285 THE TRAP MINERALS OF NOVA SCOTIA—GILPIN. 
with layers having greenish and purple tints, and have in the 
lower part beds of conglomerate. ‘The sandstones are soft and 
not well adapted for the builder’s art, although they are some- 
times quarried for hearth and chimney stones. 
They are frequently traversed by fissures filled with fibrous 
and translucent gypsum and calespar, and have, as a rule, a cal- 
careous cement. The presence of these salts of lime is readily 
accounted for when their abundance in the Lower Carboniferous 
measures is remembered ; their particles carried into the newly 
formed beds have been dissolved by water and concentrated as 
veins and masses in the fissures and open spaces. 
The soil of these sandstones, enriched by these two fertilisers, 
and the decomposed ingredients of the volcanic material about 
to be described, is of an excellent farming quality, so that Corn- 
wallis and the valley of the Annapolis river are justly called the 
“Garden of Nova Scotia.’ 
While these beds were forming, or shortly after their deposi- 
tion, great subaqueous outbursts of volcanoes occurred. Enormous 
masses of scorie and dust were poured out and settled in exten- 
sive beds; these were succeeded by, or accompanied rivers of 
lava which rapidly consolidated into the basaltic masses now 
presented to our view. The history of the succeeding oscillations 
of level of the trias and its associated trap is not yet ascertained. 
The denudation has doubtless been very great, and both sand- 
stone and trap have apparently once extended a long distance 
south of their present boundaries. The foci of these outbursts 
are still unknown, no systematic examination having yet been 
made of the courses of the trap, or of the effect of the tides on the 
submarine beds of scoriz, ete., while they remained unconsoli- 
dated. 
The most striking section of these measures can be seen at 
Blomidon. Here the sandstones dip at an easy angle to the 
north-west, and are succeeded by an immense bed of amygda- 
loidal trap, generally of a greyish color, but with tints of red. 
This bed is full of cavities and fissures holding the minerals to be 
noticed further on. In places the lower part of the amygdaloid 
appears to be very intimately mixed with sand, as if it had 
settled in the unconsolidated strata forming at the moment of 
