82 A List of Minerals and Organic Remains. 
The plentiful occurrence of gypsum, and muriate of soda, 
is a chief objection to the associating of this limestone with 
the mountain or carboniferous of England. Gypsum only 
occurs in large quantities on the north of the lakes, along the 
river Ouse, fake Erie, and on the St. Martin Islands, near 
Michilimackinac ; whose limestone cliffs can scarcely be 
classed with the English rock in question. They are a confu- — 
sed aggregate of brecciated and vesicular masses, mixed u 
here and there, with fragments of white calcareous strata, 
and broken ihe of a blue color, They contain few or n 
organic remain 
The muriate of soda occurs only on the north shore of 
Lake O : mie north of the other great lakes. 
Ihave sist veil the gs affording it; but the one near 
the Quinté Portage is Slnest on the same level with, and 
adjacent to, limestone similar to the carboniferous, in char- 
acter and contents. I have to confess that my information 
respecting the saline formations of the United States, is 
slender and inexact. Itisto be desired, that Dr. Van Rens- 
selaer would add to his late very valuable treatise a minute 
investigation of the geological peculiarities of the muriatif- 
erous rocks of the State of New-York. | am aware of the 
presence of colite and fossil echini, in their neighborhood. 
y observations, in every part of this paper, refer only to 
the Canadas 
This limestone is particularly rich in the number, novel- 
ty and beauty of its organic remains. In addition to many 
which are unknown elsewhere, it abounds es goe its 
vast extent, with those fossils which are supposed to 
racterize the carboniferous limestone; and the snalogies 
which are most important are also the most numerous, 
Gaspé, in longitude 64° opposite to Newfoundland, the Lake 
of the Woods, and all the intermediate calcareous regions, 
afford the same genera and very often, the same species. 
The following enumeration of these substances is brief, 
from the majority of them having been described at length 
with the assistance of forty-five engraved figures, in the sixth 
volume, part the second, of the transactions of the Geologi- 
cal Society of London. Some of them I shall omit, not 
having in my possession a copy of the work. I have only 
by me at present a few notes and the sketches in Indian Ink 
which 1 usually make soon after the discovery of a fossil. 
