GEOLOGY OF CAPE BRETON. 
GILPIN. 217 
great part of the spoil. It has been experimentally polished, 
and yiclds a material adapted for in-door decoration. In the 
vicinity of the quarries I have seen it used for foundations for 
houses. 
In the United States, Ohio and Michigan are the principal 
producers, the output being annually about 50,000 tons of land, 
and about 25,000 tons of calcined plaster. The imported stone 
is divided about equally between the land and the calcining mills. 
About three-fourths of the Nova Scotia gypsum goes to New 
York, where the prices vary from $2.50 to $3.50 a ton. The 
remainder is absorbed in the States nearer the Lay of Fundy. 
The Grand River, Ontario, plaster quarries send annually about 
5,000 tons of medium grade rock into the Western States for 
agricultural purposes. 
In England the annual production is about 80,000 tons, valued 
at from $3.00 to $4.00 per ton. The French deposits are very 
large, and its extensive use for fictile purposes by the ingenious 
artists of the capital of that country has gained for it the 
distinctive appellation of Plaster of Paris. 
In many places salt and gypsum are closely associated, and 
usually include magnesian limestones in the surrounding strata. 
This conjunction is the basis of the theory that gypsum is a 
product of concentration. Taking the converse, in this Province 
the associated limestones are, so far as I have been able to 
investigate the subject, decidedly non-magnesian, and the presence 
of workable deposits of salt does not clearly follow. 
Crystals of salt (chloride of sodium) are not uncommon in 
gypsum quarries, and at various points saliferous brines come to 
the surface. In our climate it would not itself be exposed as an 
outcropping stratum, but if present in our gypsum districts 
would exist as subterranean deposits, at a level below the surface 
drainage of the country. 
It could be found only by boring, and if the calculations of 
the cost of mining it, ete., would permit of its competing with 
the Canadian and foreign article, the Government could present 
to the people of this Province no more acceptable gift than the 
