TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 115 
abundance, the most promising district for enterprise being that which is 
conterminous with the known mining tracts of New York. A specimen 
of native gold, weighing two ounces and a half, and having a specific 
gravity of 15°71, was found recently in the bed of a stream running 
into the Chaudiere. It was nearly of the size and shape of a pigeon’s 
egg. A smaller specimen had been picked up a few years before near 
the same place. The district contains talecose and clay schists, quartz in 
veins or in mass, and greenstone. Except in a few spots bordering the 
coal-field of New Brunswick, the newest rock of Lower Canada is 
the carboniferous limestone. West of Toronto and toward Lakes 
Erie and Huron in Upper Canada, saliferous and gypsiferous marls 
appear, and shales with vegetable impressions and petroleum ; many 
trials for coal through the saliferous band have been unsuccessful. 
Remarks upon certain Geological Features of the River St. John in 
New Brunswick, with an Account of the Falls upwards from the Sea, 
which occur near its Embouchure in the Bay of Fundy. By JAMES 
Ross, M.D., Professor of Natural History, King’s College, New 
Brunswick. 
There are rivers and lochs into which the tide entering gives rise 
to a kind of fall upwards against the ordinary course of the stream, 
but nowhere in the world is the phenomenon of a fall up a river 
to be so clearly seen as at the falls near the mouth of the river St. 
John, in the province of New Brunswick. The steamers from and 
to Fredericton (the head quarters of the executive government in 
New Brunswick) pass through the falls, but passengers always go to 
and from them above the broken water. The rocks of the vici- 
nity consist of graywacke or transition slates, alternating with lime- 
stone, sometimes crystalline, and rarely holding any fossils. Above 
the falls a mass of sienite protrudes and alters both the chemical na- 
ture and mechanical arrangements of the stratified rocks. The slates 
and limestones are almost all vertical, and the strike is about N.E. and 
S.W. The St. John River cuts these across almost at right angles. 
Further up the river are stratified rocks corresponding in part with 
those of the*coal measures in England. These are nearly horizontal, 
and lie upon the more inclined slaty strata mentioned above. When 
the river runs over the sandstones and grits, its course is equal and 
slow; but when it gets among the slates, disturbed and tormented by 
granite and sienite, its flow is violent and impetuous. About 250 
miles higher up there is a very fine fall of seventy-five feet, and a head- 
long rapid of more than a quarter of a mile at the bottom of a most 
magnificent ravine. These upper falls are over black calcareous slates, 
highly inclined, and so easily acted on by the water, that the line of the 
fall can be readily ascertained to have been carried back for a consider- 
able distance. For the remaining 300 or 400 miles of its course there are 
no falls on the river St. John, but there are several powerful rapids. 
The headwaters rise in a flat country among swamps and sandy plains, 
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