78 Essay on the Transition Rocks of the Cataraqut. 
This specimen (fig. 5,) is of a grey color, and even the columns 
glitter with the siliceous particles of the cherty limestone of which it 
iscomposed. ‘The prisms are broken, sharp, and not so soft or needle 
like as the Kingston ones; nor have they the bituminous or hair like 
appearance although their conformation is otherwise the same: [be- 
lieve they are not common at the falls, never having seen any other 
specimen than this one from that locality. 
Nature appears to have been in one of her most varying moods 
when the rocks and minerals of the neighborhood of the Cataraqui 
were formed, as in so small a littoral as that embraced by the wa- 
ters of the Ontario and those of the Cataraqui and Gananoqui rivers, 
almost every variety of the primitive and transition classes with the 
confused detritus of ancient convulsions in the forms of boulders, 
sands, gravels and mud, are to be found without much difficulty. I 
have now before me, a mass of limestone glittering with calcareous 
spangles, in which is imbedded a large piece of basanite of the shape 
of the valve of a huge terebratula, but which, on closer examination, 
looks more as though it had been a flattened trilobite, and every day 
brings forth some new and equally curious variations from the usual — 
appearances in similar geological associations. 
‘But, although nature is so singularly sportive in her mineral crea- 
tions on these hills, she appears to have been determined to withhold 
the evidence of the ages of the rocks as far as she possibly could in 
the remains of the animal kingdom. - In a long and extensive course — 
of quarrying, embracing nearly four years, only one perfect fossil 
was discovered and that the entomolithus paradoxicus, of which, from 
its comparative rarity in this locality, I cannot avoid giving the follow 
ing drawing, figs. 6, (a,) and 6, (b.) The terebratular family are 
owever, more numerous, some of the lower plateaux of the trai- 
sition limestone being filled with their remains which are sometimes 
in a very perfect state ; these, with a very limited number of the 
strange fossil of the anilaseerante tribe, named recently the Huronia, 
are the chief and indeed almost the only fossils which have been 
discovered here. In a’ future number of this essay, I hope to be 
able to depict a specimen of the tables mentioned in the first path 
in which the Huronia reposes. The larger orthocerites hitherto 
discovered and of the pointed conical form are more numerous; 
but in general are in a very weather worn state. One or two have 
recently seen which reached the great length of nearly five feet, and 
which I shall probably again revert to; but it is now time that W° 
