86 Lieut. Baddeley on the geognosy 
scribed, we reached a small bay, at the bottom of which the 
Moulin a Bande rivulet enters the St. Lawrence, at the dis- 
tance of about three miles fromthe Post. It is here that the 
bed of white marble is situated, which has already excited much 
attention. We visited this place late in the evening, and could 
only spare ten minutes to its examination. It lays in close 
contact with syenitic gneiss, a rock composed of white felspar, 
grey quartz and black hornblende ; the latter of which mine- 
rals it is, that by its arrangement in parallel seams and layers, 
“makes the term gneiss more applicable to it than granite ; these 
seams and layers indeed are sometimes so thick, and always so 
continuous, as to merit the name of alternating ‘ hornblende 
schists’? of Macculloch, if an aggregate, in other places in the 
neighbourhood, of so intrusive a character, and on that account 
agreeing better with one of his ‘ overlying”? rocks,-can be 
admitted among that class. The fracture of the rock is effected 
more readily in the direction of these seams than elsewhere, and 
the surface thus exposed hasa black pseudo metallic brilliancy, 
resembling some micaceous schists, for which at the first sight 
it might be mistaken, but the easy fusibility before the blow- 
pipe, into a black shining globule, of that mineral which some- 
times resembles black mica, is a sufficient distinction. 
But to return to the marble: At its junction with the 
gneiss, it is much entangled with it, and it is stained in many 
places of a greenish color. Conformable to the accompanying 
strata it dips io the S. W. at a high angle, and crops out in 
yellowish white water-washed masses on the shore, at the bot- 
tom of a precipitous cliff, where alone we saw it. None of 
the specimens examined could be considered of excellent quality, 
as they were much stained and bastardised by what was sup- 
posed to be either hornblende or epidote; besides they are of 
a laminar, and not of that granular, structure which bestows on 
the white Italian marbles their greatest value, by causing them’ 
to 
