666 SUMMARY OF THE HISTORY. 



phism of the Silurian rocks, and the origin of the numerous metallic 

 veins by which these are traversed. 



This great earth-storm of the later Devonian left the surface of 

 Acadia with its grand features marked out as they are at present ; 

 and the wide wooded swamps of the Carboniferous, and the sea 

 areas in which its beds of shells and corals were depicted, occu- 

 pied the present valleys of the country, and were limited by the 

 same ridges of folded Silurian and Devonian rocks, which form 

 the highest hills at present. So close is this correspondence, that 

 the limits of the older formations on the map must very nearly 

 mark the coast-lines of Carboniferous Acadia at the epoch of the 

 Carboniferous limestone. For the present interests of Acadia, the 

 great Devonian disturbances which charged the older formations 

 with metallic minerals, and tilted up to the surface the great beds of 

 iron ore, and the succeeding growth of the coal accumulations of the 

 Carboniferous period, were the most important of all its geological 

 changes, as being the sources of its great mineral wealth. Yet these 

 momentous eras are not to be taken by themselves, but as links in a 

 great chain of processes, with all the parts of which they are more or 

 less closely connected. 



Here we may pause for a moment to glance at the map, and to 

 observe the three broad bands of Lower Silurian rock, portions 

 of which appear on it, all of them running in a north-east and south- 

 west direction. The most northern of these is seen only on a comer 

 of the map, skirting the south side of the St Lawrence ; but it is 

 the most important of the whole, extending far to the south-west 

 through Canada and the United States, constituting, with the excep- 

 tion of the Laurentian already mentioned, the oldest portion of the 

 great Appalachian breast-bone of North America. The second is 

 that extending across New Brunswick into Maine, and thence south- 

 ward along the coast-line of the United States. The third is the 

 coast series of Nova Scotia, extending to the north-east into New- 

 foundland, but disappearing to the south-west under the Atlantic. 

 All these are auriferous and otherwise metalliferous, and they consti- 

 tute three great lines of upheaval or ridging up of the earth's crust, 

 in the troughs between which lie the Upper Silurian, Devonian, and 

 Carboniferous areas of Acadia. 



Of no geological period is the history better recorded in the Acadian 

 provinces than the Carboniferous, in regard to which they may even 

 be considered as a typical region, presenting the formations of that 

 period in the greatest possible thickness and variety, and exhibiting 

 in a very perfect manner, and with features not as yet paralleled in 



