Mineralogy and Geology of Nova Scotia. 289 
Carriboo river, in the township of New Philadelphia, seven 
miles north of the flourishing town of Pictou, presents a field of 
great interest both to the mineralogist and the miner. On the 
banks of this stream, two miles from where it empties into the 
Gulf of St. Lawrence, occurs a bed of copper ore, included be- 
tween the strata of sandstone passing into coarse conglomerate. 
It is associated with lignites of enormous size, which generally 
lie over the copper ore. The conglomerate consists of smooth 
rounded masses of quartz of various colors, siliceous slate, clay 
slate, and felspar, varying in size from that of a filbert to three 
or four inches in diameter; they are united by an argillaceous 
cement. The sandstone differs only in the size of the com- 
ponent ingredients, which diminish until they are scarcely dis- 
tinguishable by the naked eye. These rocks rise from the 
river to the height of fifteen or twenty feet above its level, and 
form precipitous banks. The direction of the strata is nearly 
east and west, and the dip is about ten degrees to the north. 
The lignites are black, and some of them resemble com- 
mon charcoal so much as to be easily mistaken for that sub- 
stance. Some are fibrous, and exhibit evident traces of the 
organized structure of plants; others have lost every trace of 
organization, are compact without any fibrous structure, break 
with a conchoidal fracture, have a pitchy black color, and thus 
form the true jet of commerce, or the lignite piciforme jayet of M. 
Brongniart. This last variety take a good polish, and would ad- 
mit of being wrought into jet ornaments inferior in no respect 
to those brought to this country from France. The lignite forms 
thin layers over masses of the copper ore, which sometimes 
presents very perfect substitutions or casts of culmiferous plants 
resembling the stalks of Indian corn (zea mays.) 
The lignite sometimes contains minute, flattened crystals of 
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