loo Transactions of the Canadian Institute, [vol. ix 



cumulated a wider knowledge of the resources of the new land. Our 

 own portion of the continent has been thus far explored by the expen- 

 diture of the energies of the most dauntless of the two races — represented 

 in the early days by the fur traders of the Hudson's Bay Company and 

 the French Canadian adventurers of Lower Canada. Many thrilling 

 tales of these and later travellers are so modestly told that their full ap- 

 preciation comes only to those whose experience enables them to read be- 

 tween the lines. Nor can we in any manner assume that this age of 

 heroic service has passed away since it is hard to find in even the latest 

 journals of explorers, whether in the national service or not, any undue 

 stress laid on personal matters. Our conception of the resources of our 

 country is still being enlarged by undertakings in the nature of explor- 

 ations and also by the systematic examination of more accessible fields. 

 Part of our knowledge is thus definite and part general. The older 

 known fields and those where coal mining is becoming stable have as a 

 rule been fairly well studied. Many samples from remote localities have 

 been examined and we are enabled in this way to predicate the value of 

 the fuels. With probably only some minor differences there is no known 

 kind or quality of coal that can not be duplicated from some part of 

 Canada. From the little altered vegetable remains found in the peat 

 bogs to the rock like anthracite, the remains of early highly altered 

 vegetation, the scale seems complete. Lignites in which the woody fibre 

 is prominent are found to be succeeded by black lignites resembling true 

 coal. These again are followed by the bituminous coals with which may 

 be classed the ultra bituminous cannel coals whose more earthy varieties 

 are known as oil shales. Any of these latter varieties by local conditions 

 assume the harder anthracitic forms, in localities where the beds have 

 been subjected to extra pressure. 



In age the Arctic Islands divide the honours with New Brunswick 

 in holding in their rocks coal which is the remains of the first vegetation 

 which appeared in any abundance on the margin of the sea. Very little 

 of this appears to have been a truly land flora. The Horton and Albert 

 shales of New Brunswick and the Lower Carboniferous of the Arctic 

 Islands owe their carbon constituents probably to aquatic plants of 

 primitive type with an admixture probably of the lower minute forms of 

 marine fauna. The great coal formation of the Carboniferous Period 

 is represented in the New Brunswick and Nova Scotia coal fields. Else- 

 where in Canada where rocks of this period are found, such as in the 

 Rocky Mountains and British Columbia, no land appears to have been 

 near and the shore deposits of the western coast of the continent 

 as then constituted have been swept away. A long interval in time 

 separates these deposits from the coal producing Cretaceous (so named 



