PROCEEDINGS. IX 



stone like the Permian or Triassic. Near the Demoiselle hills we saw splendid 

 demonstrations of the manner in which pits are produced in gypsum regions. 

 Veins were found running out to the coast. By the solution of these in water, 

 cavities were formed, and eventually the superincumbent earth fell in. We saw 

 natural trenches thus made, apparently showing each spring's work, and we in- 

 vestigated some quite fresh falls, on lines going pi'etty far inland. At this fine 

 exposure of the igneous rocks the jointed and crumbling rocks show in many 

 places coatings of small crystals of silica, but some were nearly an inch long and 

 a half inch in diameter, perfectly hexagonal, but more or less ferruginous. The 

 crystals were commonly mingled with or replaced by beautiful glistening crystals 

 of specular iron. In the same region also fragments of stone with manganese de- 

 posits were noticed. Gypsum was found sometimes crystallized as pure selenite, 

 often as white, orange, grey, banded and party-colored gypsum ; but most often 

 as fibrous gypsum, the fibres running from one wall of the vein to the other. 

 Amherst island sends out northeasterly two huge armlike sand bars seven or 

 eight miles long, eiiclosing a salt lagoon three or four miles broad in some places, 

 which clasp Grindstone island by its two southern red sand stone ears. Through 

 this island a similar anticlinal runs nearly parallel to the former, but nearer the 

 northern coast than the southern. The doleritic knolls and ridges rise in the 

 interior to over 600 feet probably. The gypsum bearing rocks are closely associa- 

 ted, then the coarse and variegated sandstones, and farther off still, red soft sand 

 stone rises in perpendicular and picturesquely scored cliffs over the sea, in some 

 places perhaps a hundred feet high. Towards the anticlinal some impure lime- 

 stone bands were observed, and crops of calcite crystals were knocked off 

 some rocks. Grindstone island, like its southern neighbor Amherst, tried to ex- 

 tend its two arms of sand bars 20 or 25 miles to the northern group. But the 

 eastern arm is broken at the beginning by the entrance to House Harbor, and the 

 part cut off is a respectable island — Alright, with high sandstone cliffs to 

 the sea, with the doleritic knolls and gypsiferous surroundings which form a part 

 of the system of the neighboring island. From Alright the arm extends to the 

 northern entrance to the long, shallow, bar-bounded sea, and ends opposite Coffin 

 island. The western bar extends in a straight line for nearly twelve miles to the 

 red-sandstone cliffed Wolfe's islet, which is like a sesamoid bone in the middle of 

 a muscle of sand nearly 24 miles long— connecting Grindstone with Grosse 

 Isle, and the chain similarly connected sweeping around the north to Coffin's 

 Land. In this northern group, the higher red sandstone was observed, and the 

 lower sandstones, and at one place signs of gypsum deposits ; and at the northern 

 capes strata of some impure limestones which were not higher than the gypsum 

 beds probably were observed. Between Old Harry Point, where Neptune often 

 raises the old man in columns of thundering spray spouting up the channeled 

 sandstone Clio's, and East Cape, the ocean in full swing falls upon a regular bay- 

 like curve of several miles, where the beach is of the most beautiful sand, sloping 

 up gently and evenly from the pounding surf for about 80 yards. Then there is 

 a nearly perpendicular wall of sand averaging perhaps 20 feet in height, then a 

 second rampart 5 or more feet high, from which there is a rapid slope inland to a 

 low region of undulating sand hills covered with Empetrum, Vaccinium, Hud- 

 sonia, Spartina, &c. , and stunted bushes. This wall, extending for miles, looked 



