20 ft. to the first series of claA^-slates. This foot wall (?) 

 carries a very hard band of ferruginous quartzite, about 10 ft. 

 wide. Immediately beyond this vein an intensely hard diorite 

 was met with. The crosscut was only driven about 15 ft. at the 

 time of my visit, as it was intended to continue the shaft and to 

 crosscut at a deeper level. 



The bottom of the shaft was so wet that I could not see any 

 of the features there, but I critically examined the stuff sent up 

 from this position, and secured from it various specimens of the 

 so-called fossils. These occur both in the semidecomposed rock 

 and in a true graphitic slate, so that evidently the clay-slates 

 have changed at some depth below 200 ft. to graphitic slates, and, 

 according to Mr. Bethune, this change took place gradually at a 

 depth of about 200 ft. 



The specimens which Mr. Bethune regarded as fossils, I at 

 first thought they were so ; that one was the cast of a Unio, 

 another of a Rhynchonella, and so on. Hence I considered that 

 the diorite on the east side was the result of a flow over horizontal 

 beds, represented now by the vertical clay-slates. But on going 

 below and studying the section I changed my views, especially 

 when I remembered that the graphitic schists at the Queen 

 Margaret mine carried similar pyritous nodules, only they are for 

 the most part spherical. I am now of the opinion that the clay- 

 slates and graphitic slates are examples of contact-meta- 

 morphism. 



I imagine that the diorite on the east side is an intrusive mass 

 and found a partial vent in a fissure in the porphyry on the west 

 side. The result of the intense pressure would be to cause the 

 slaty structure assumed by the metamorphosed porphyrj-. The 

 volatile hydrocarbons escaping from below, contemporaneous with 

 diorite-intrusion, could easily supply the necessary carbon to 

 render the slates graphitic. Surface oxidation would remove the 

 graphitic matter above the water-level. The pseudo-fossils would 

 be present before the intrusion of the diorite, and had at that 

 time probably a spherical form. The upward and lateral pressures 

 will account for the more or less elongated and flattened form 

 which they now present. 



The origin of the ferruginous quartzite bands I explain as 

 follows: — The diorite and also the contact-metamorphosed rock 

 on cooling would naturally contract and thus would cause fissures 

 more or less irregular, which by deposition of silica and iron-salts 

 from solution in percolating waters would be in course of time 

 completely filled. Could one critically examine the locus of the 

 pseudo-fossils, and should they be found to lie in a vertical plane, 

 then my view would receive considerable support. 



