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CHAPTER VI. 



THE TRIAS OK NEW RED SANDSTONE. 



GENERAL DISTRIBUTION RED SANDSTONES VARIETIES OF TRAP- — NEW 



RED FROM TRURO TO AVON ESTUARY BLOMIDON TO BRIAR ISLAND. 



Between the Drift and the New Red Sandstone, a deposit probably 

 of the same age with the Triassic System of geologists, there is a 

 great hiatus in the geology of Nova Scotia. During all those periods 

 in which the middle and older Tertiaries, the Cretaceous and the 

 Oolitic systems were produced, no rocks appear to have been formed 

 within its area, or if they were formed they have been swept away. 

 This remark applies not only to Nova Scotia, but to an immense 

 region extending through New Brunswick, Canada, and the Northern 

 United States ; and, in some directions, far beyond the limits of those 

 countries. During those long periods, these regions, thus destitute of 

 the newer Secondary and Tertiary rocks, may have been in the interior 

 of a great continent, or in the fathomless depths of an ocean where no 

 sediment was being deposited ; but whatever their condition, they 

 retain no geological monuments of the lapse of time. In passing, then, 

 from the Boulder formation to that which for convenience we may 

 call the New Red Sandstone, to distinguish it from rocks of similar 

 character but greater age, the reader may be reminded by a glance at 

 the Table in Chapter II., that Ave are passing at one leap over a great 

 part of the earth's geological history. 



The distribution of the New Red Sandstone, as shown on the map, 

 indicates that, when it was deposited, the form and contour of the 

 country already made some approach to those which it still retains. 

 Just as the marsh mud lines the coasts of the Bay of Fundy, so do 

 we find the New Red occupying an inner zone, and appearing to have 

 been deposited in a bay a little wider and longer than the present one. 

 It is indeed to this bay district that, in Nova Scotia and New Bruns- 

 wick, the New Red has been chiefly confined, and it may have been 

 deposited in circumstances not very dissimilar from those of the present 

 marshes, except that the older deposit is accompanied by evidence that 



