Till: CAMBRIAN. 



trated by numerous granite veins, which in the vicinity of the 

 mine were seen to vary from six feet to less than an inch in thick- 

 ness. In these circumstances, the gold-bearing slates and quartzitea 

 have experienced a metamorphosis equal to any observed elsewhere 

 in this coastal series. The slates have become perfectly crystalline. 

 Mica-schists, or micaceous gneisses, with crystals of chiastolite and 

 staurolite, have been developed in them, and they are absolutely nn- 

 distinguishable from the rocks of the Cape Canscau peninsula and of 

 Shelburne and Barrington, as described in Acadian Geology. This 

 I consider a perfectly conclusive vindication of the views held by me 

 in 1868, and I have reason to believe that it will apply to all other 

 localities. I would not, however, maintain the negative conclusion 

 that nowhere in this district do Laurentian or Uurouian rocks 

 penetrate the Gold series ; though the only locality where I have 

 seen any rocks which appeared likely to be of this kind, is in the 

 extreme west, in the vicinity of Yarmouth, where certain epidotic, 

 felspathic, and chloritic rocks appear, of a very different character 

 from those of other parts of the coast, and which may be Huronian 

 (Ac. Geol., pp. 616, 620). Mr Selwyn has recently examined thi 

 rocks more in detail than I have been able to do, and regards 

 them as probably older than the Gold series.* 



The apparent relation of the granite veins and auriferous quartz 

 at Cochrane's Hill suggests an interesting question with respect to 

 the age of the latter. It would seem that the quartz veins cut or 

 disturb those of granite, and hence arc newer. Now, if the intru- 

 sive granite is of Upper Silurian or Devonian age, this would limit 

 the age of the gold veins on one side, just as the occurrence of drift 

 gold in the Lower Carboniferous conglomerate of Gay's River limits 

 it on the other. In this case the movements of the Cambrian rocks 

 which opened up the gold veins must have taken place in the 

 Devonian age. -J- There is, however, some reason to believe that all 

 the gold veins are not precisely of one date, and this conclusion may 

 apply only to the later of them.| Perhaps, taking this in connection 

 with the fact already stated, that the gold deposits seem richer in 

 the vicinity of the granite, we may be justified in affirming that the 

 granite intrusions and gold veins are "roughly contemporaneous." 

 This is the conclusion at which I arrived in 1868, and stated in the 

 second edition of Acadian Geology. § 



Mr Selwyn has ascertained that the granite and gneissose rocks of 



* Report, Geol. Survey, 1870. f Acadian Geology, p. 631. 



| Mr Poole mentions tome a case of granite apparently " capping " a quartz vein. 



§ See Acad. Geol., pp. 6(35, 666. 



