546 Geological Society: Anniversary Address, 1843. 
Newfoundland.—This very ancient British colony, viewed until 
recently as a mere fishing station, but now rising rapidly into im- 
portance through its internal sources, has recently undergone a 
geological survey by one of our members, which demands notice in 
this portion of my Address, because the author, Mr. Jukes, is of 
opinion, that this island contains no strata of younger age than the 
Carboniferous. The eastern parts are, it appears, composed of 
very thick deposits of slaty rocks, sandstones and conglomerates, 
which are divided into upper and lower masses. They are pene- 
trated by different igneous rocks traced from north-north-east to 
south-south-west in a number of anticlinal and synclinal lines. Great 
masses of the central tract are usurped by granite and various 
igneous with metamorphic rocks, which are followed on the west by 
a band of gneiss and mica schist with crystalline limestone*, To what 
epochs any of the slaty rocks belong, has not been determined, as no 
organic remains have been found in them, but on the western shores, 
this ancient and crystallized series is overlapped by red sandstone, 
shale, gypsum, beds of coal subordinate to shale, marl, yellow sand- 
stone and grit. I here quote the ascending order which Mr, Jukes 
assigns to the strata; but as he admits he never could observe con- 
secutive sections, is it not possible that the great gypsiferous beds 
of Newfoundland may occupy the same place in relation to the coal- 
fields as in the opposite shores of Nova Scotia, and like them re- 
present the Permian deposits? In fact, Mr, Jukes candidly states, 
that the gypsiferous, red and inferior portion of the coal formation 
(as he classes it) is so similar to the New Red Sandstone of En- 
gland, that he was at first sight tempted to give it that name. Now 
as these rocks are seen in one section only beneath the coal, the fol- 
lowing hypothesis may be adopted: that the coal in question is not a 
portion of the great old coal formation, but of the same age as the 
coal in the Permian rocks of Russia, and that the strata have been 
inverted where our author examined them, a phenomenon easily 
understood in a region so highly metamorphosed as Newfoundland, 
and where rocks of the age of the Magnesian Limestone may have 
been locally placed beneath true carboniferous strata. It would be 
wrong, however, to attempt more than mere suggestions from any 
evidence which has yet been brought before us, since Mr. Jukes 
has found no traces of organic remains even in these uppermost de- 
posits of Newfoundland. In truth, our associate has evidently had 
to grapple with some of the most ambiguous rock-masses of North 
America, in a country obscured by moss and vegetation, as yet 
who is of opinion, that they bear a most striking analogy to those of the 
Magnesian Limestone of England. It is satisfactory, therefore, to know 
that the beds containing the footmarks are proved to be of the same age 
with the gypsiferous rocks by the presence of the same group of fossils, 
Mr, Logan alludes to plants which I have not seen, and the exact com- 
parison of these and others collected by Mr, Lyell with Permian types is 
still very desirable.—April Ist, 1843. 
* See also some very interesting observations on the structure of New- 
foundland in Sir R. Bonnycastle’s ‘ Newfoundland in 1842,’ vol. i. p. 179. 
