476 Geological Society : — 



trate the metamorphic rocks. To the westward of Esqulmalt black 

 cherty limestones and red porphyry occur. 



To the north, at Nanaimo, rocks with cretaceous fossils appear, 

 also at Comoux Island, 21 miles N.W. of Nanaimo. The fossils oc- 

 cur in nodules, and consist of Fish-scales, Nautilus, Ammonites, 

 Baculites, Inoceramiis, Astarte (?), Terebratula. 



Lignitiferous deposits (sandstones, grits, conglomerates, and mica- 

 ceous flagstones) succeed the cretaceous rocks, and are extensively de- 

 veloped over a great extent of country, forming the mass of the islands 

 in the Gulf of Georgia, as far south as Saturna Island. Northward, 

 they occur at Fort Rupert. Two seams of coal, averaging 6 to 8 feet 

 each in thickness, occur in these beds, and are extensively worked for 

 the supply of the steamers navigating between Victoria and the 

 Frazer River. The coal is a soft black lignite, interspersed with 

 small lenticular bands of bright crystalline coal. Retinite is common 

 in the more earthy portions. Shales with plant-remains are inter- 

 stratified with the lignite. At Bellingham Bay, on the mainland, 

 similar coal-bearing sandstones have been observed by the American 

 geologists. 



A pleistocene boulder-clay is widely distributed over the southern 

 part of Vancouver's Island and the opposite coasts of the mainland. 

 In the neighbourhood of Esquimalt and Victoria the rocks are deeply 

 scratched and grooved along the shore ; and so also is the rock-sur- 

 face beneath the drift, which at Esquimalt Harbour is about 20 feet 

 thick, whilst it is much more at the Barracks, and more than 190 

 feet thick between Albert Head and Esquimalt. 



November 16. — Professor J. Phillips, President, in the Chair. 



The following communication was read : — 



" Supplementary Researches among the Crystalline Rocks of the 

 North-west Highlands." By Sir R. I. Murchi'son, V.P.R.S., F.G.S. 



This communication was offered in corroboration of those views 

 of the Author, already printed in the ' Quarterly Journal of the Geo- 

 logical Society' (No. 59), which he first brought systematically before 

 geologists at the Glasgow Meeting of the British Association in 1855. 



The former suggestion of Prof. Nicol, that the fossiliferous rock of 

 Durness and Assynt might prove to be of carboniferous age (Quart. 

 Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xiii. p. 17), having been set aside by the proofs 

 that tliese quartz-rocks and limestones contained true Lower Silurian 

 fossils ; and the order of succession from a fundamental gneiss up- 

 wards through unconformable sandstones and conglomerates (Cam- 

 brian) to the Lower Silurian limestone inclusive, being admitted, it 

 was still objected that such limestones were not surmounted by any 

 great mass of quartz-rock, and that they terminated the ascending 

 series. Professor Nicol, also believed that there did not exist an 

 ascending order from the rocks now proved to be Lower Silurian into 

 a series of micaceous, quartzose, and chloritic flagstones, which have 

 to the present day been represented by the same colour as the Old 

 Gneiss in all the published geological maps of Scotland. Lastly, 

 that author, having fairly and openly announced to Sir R. I. Mur- 

 chison, that at the Meeting of the British Association at Aberdeen 



