GASPEREAU VALLEY, NOVA SCOTIA HAYCCCK. 373 



the action of underground water while finding its way to the 

 surface through the fissures of the fractured zone of the 

 Oaspereau fault. These veins, though newer than the slate in 

 which they occur, are still older than the Carboniferous sand- 

 stones that overlie them and contain abundant fragments of 

 the white quartz of which they are composed. If the interpre- 

 tation of their origin be correct, it follows that the fault along 

 which they were formed had its beginnings before the Car- 

 boniferous period. The outlining of the Wolfville ridge was 

 contemporaneous with the formation of the fault, and its 

 Pre-Carboniferous origin is thus indicated. 



The simplest interpretation of the strip of sandstone dipping 

 into the southern brow of this ridge is that it was deposited 

 along the southern shore when the ridge projected eastwards, 

 as a low point, into the Carboniferous sea. Contemporaneous 

 bed* of similar material were deposited on the north side of the 

 point of land. The whole area gradually subsiding, the coarse 

 sandstones that lined the coast in shallow water crept farther 

 and farther up the slopes, covering the low point of slate as the 

 water level rose upon the land. Subsequently, as farther move- 

 ment along the fault plane took place, these newer beds were 

 broken and their ends pushed upward along its northern side 

 until elevated above the sea and laid bare by ages of erosion, we 

 now see them apparently dipping into the hill of slate along 

 which they were deposited as approximately horizontal beds 

 when the hill itself was a low point of land on the coast of a 

 Carboniferous bay. 



The Triassic sandstones have not yet been observed in the 

 Oaspereau Valley along the line of section, although there seems 

 to be no good reason for there not being found if they exist 

 there. A reasonable interpretation of their absence is that when 

 the Triassic sandstones that occur at corresponding levels on the 

 north side of the ridge in the Cornwallis Valley were being laid 

 down as a shallow water formation, along a slowly subsiding 

 coast, the displacement along this fault plane had not taken place 

 to its present extent and the land surface south of the fault was 



