426 Dr. Bigsby's Sketch of the Topogy-aphy 



where at a wharf there is a steep limestone rock about ninety 

 feet high, but not absolutely perpendicular. 



On the peninsula of Prince Edward, I am informed there 

 are some very high cliffs; I have not seen them. Quints 

 Portage, and the Presquisle Point, three miles W. of it, rest 

 upon this limestone. The north main adjoining Quinte Bay 

 is in gentle undulations, occasionally high enough to be called 

 ridges. It is highly fertile, and supports an opulent yeomanry. 

 The River Nappanee, thirty miles west of Kingston, besides 



f)resenting some remarkably pretty scenery, exhibits at its 

 owest Falls a fine vertical section of the limestone. 



At Kingston there is discovered at least one hundred feet 

 perpendicular of this rock ; I believe that the form in which it 

 is found here may be taken as a type of the whole, with some 

 exceptions to be stated afterwards. Its layers are from six 

 to eighteen inches thick, with rough floors and roofs ; often 

 coated with a thin black glaze which scales off: occasionally 

 they are quite shaly. " The subdivisions in the strata, which 

 from their singular shape have been called sutures, are seen in 

 most of them at this place; but they are very irregular in size 

 and number : sometimes there are many in a small layer, and 

 none in a large one. They are not continuous for any distance, 

 but disappear in the form of a fissure. They are commonly, 

 but not always, horizontal. They often form a sort of irre- 

 gular knot (as in wood) in the middle of a stratum." ( Vide Nia- 

 gara, Geology of.) — The highest strata, those of the upper plat- 

 Ibrm, are blue, fine-granular, of conchoidal fracture, and are 

 everywhere crowded with a great variety of organic remains, 

 while none are found below. The latter are studded, in most 

 places, with small masses of hyaline calcspar (as at Marmora), 

 and are usually of finer texture than those above, even so much 

 so as to be quite compact, sharp-edged, and of highly conchoidal 

 fracture. The hardness is also somewhat increased ; and the 

 colour changes to a brown, which in the middle and lower por- 

 tions is quite a gray, with sometimes a greenish tinge. The 

 strata near the beach are usually much weathered. The lime- 

 stone of Point Henry adjacent, differs but little from that of 

 Kingston, but is destitute of organic remains, although their 

 respective highest layers are at nearly the same level; but 

 those of Kingston have a much greater body of rock interposed 

 between them and the gneiss than the strata of Point Henry, 

 which are only a few feet distant at most. The inferior layers 

 of this point are well developed in a quarry on the south of the 

 fort. It is blue at the top, then greenish and more granular 

 (as if weathered) for four or five feet; then clove-brown for 



