25 + 



NATURE 



{July 2C, 1876 



interference, in a manner similar to Kcenig's well-known 

 apparatus for that purpose, constructed on the method of 



Wheatstone. ^ ,, t^ 



John G. McKendrick 



THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF NEW- 

 FOUNDLAND 



DUE no ice of the Report for 1874, of Mr. Murray, 

 the Director of the Newfoundland Geological 

 Survey, has been delayed until the appearance of the 

 map and sections referred to in that Report. These we 

 have now received, and as they deserve more than ordi- 

 nary attention from geologists, we propose to give some 

 account of the recent work of the Survey. The able 

 and indefatigable Director, who, like his late chief. Sir 

 William Logan, has grown grey in the service of the 

 Dominion, divides his Report into two parts, one of 

 which narrates his own labours during 1 874, while the 

 other is furnished by his assistant, Mr. J. P. Howley, of 

 whose surveys for the same period it gives rhe mam 

 results. Mr. Murray's Report is marked by that quiet 

 practical good sense which formed so characteristic a 

 feature of his contributions to the Canadian Geological 

 Survey. It is more occupied with plans and advice for 

 opening up the country to settlers, and developing the 

 great resources of the island in timber and as a cattle- 

 grazing district, than with geological matters. The latter 

 are treated, too, with an eye to luture mineral industries. 

 Mr. Murray, in short, is doing the solid and useful work 

 of pioneering. That work may make no brilliant display 

 at the time, but if, as he hopefully anticipates, there is a 

 prosperous future before Newfoundland, the colonists 

 will look back upon his labours as those which largely 

 guided and stimulated that prosperity. 



But Mr. Murray is too true a geologist to let any chance 

 escape him of advancing the purely scientific treatment 

 of geology. And he is fortunate in possessing in Mr. 

 Howley a geologist who can carry out his views with 

 admirable skill. From Mr. Howley's Report and Map 

 geologists in other countries will learn some particulars 

 not only important as regards the geology of the colony, 

 but of general interest as bearing on the question of the 

 nature and modus operandi of the metamorphic action to 

 which the origin of such rocks as dolomite and serpentine 

 is attributed. 



Mr. Howley's labours during 1874 were, m accordance 

 with Mr. Murray's plans, given to the survey, topo- 

 graphical and geological, of the western coast of New- 

 foundland, about the peninsula and bays of Port-a-Port, 

 and St. George's Bay. In tracing the Lower Silurian 

 formations of the Newfoundland coast, Mr. Murray and his 

 colleagues have been able to identify them with more or 

 less precision as equivalents of the Quebec and Birdseye 

 and Black River groups of Canada. But in the course of 

 their surveys they have at different times encountered 

 intercalated sheets of metamorphic rocks in the Lower 

 Silurian series overlying unaltered and fossiliferous strata. 

 Thus at Bonne Bay, in 1862, Mr. Richardson found 

 highly metamorphosed rocks, including white talcose 

 slates and serpentine, in some portion apparently of 

 the Quebec group. Four years afterwards Mr. Murray 

 observed further south, in the Bay of Islands, that sand- 

 stones believed to represent the Sillery zone of the Quebec 

 group passed below the serpentine of the Blowmedown 

 mountains. Mr. Howley has now confirmed and ex- 

 tended these observations by mapping the country 

 between the Bay of Islands and St. George's Bay. He 

 has traced Mr. Murray's serpentine rocks southwards to 

 Bluff Head, and finds that they pass unconformably over 

 different horizons of rocks which are taken to represent 

 the Sillery and Levis subdivisions of the Quebec group 

 of the Lower Silurian system. The striking character of 

 this unconformable junction is well brought out upon the 



map, where two large cakes of the overlying rocks are 

 seen to sweep over both anticlinal and synclinal folds of 

 the lower formations. These cakes consist of brecciated 

 dolomite or limestone, chlorite-slate, diorite, and serpen- 

 tine, having a total thickness of perhaps 1,500 feet. Their 

 exact geological horizon seems not yet quite satisfactorily 

 fixed, but they are placed provisionally between the Sillery 

 and Birdseye and Black River formations. Doubtless 

 further details will be given in future reports regard- 

 ing this remarkable feature of Newfoundland geolojjy, 

 and till they appear it may be well to avoid any discussion 

 of the theoretical aspect of the subject. It is not the first 

 time that an instance has occurred of the higher rocks 

 of a district being more metamorphosed than the lower, 

 but there has probably never been observed so remark- 

 able a case, for here the metamorphosed and contorted 

 series is described as actually overlying unmetamor- 

 phosed strata. . , t^ tu 



Other questions of interest occur in the Report. 1 hus 

 a centre of pre-carboniferous volcanic action is indicated 

 as existing along a line north of Fox Island and on the 

 coast to the south head of the Bay of Islands. The coal- 

 measures, of which a few patches occur in the district 

 surveyed, overlap from the Millstone Grit on to the Car- 

 boniferous Limestone. The latter formation contains, 

 according to Mr. Davidson, brachiopoda which all belong 

 to well-known British species. In another respect there 

 is a curious analogy between the base of the Carbo- 

 niferous system in Newfoundland and in some parts of 

 Britain. In the former country the lower members of 

 that system consist largely of red and green sandstones 

 clays, and conglomerates, with traces of plants, beds of 

 gypsum, and occasional limestones full of ordinary Carbo- 

 niferous Limestone fossils. Anyone who has looked at 

 the base of the Carboniferous system in Cumberlarid, 

 Westmoreland, Dumfriesshire, and other parts of Britain, 

 will recognise these lithological features as characteristic 

 also in this country. It would seem that the same 

 physical conditions preceded the deposition of the Carbo- 

 niferous Limestone on both sides of the Atlantic— inland 

 seas or lakes, not far separated from the sea, in which red 

 sediment with gypsum and occasionally common salt 

 was laid down, but which were not usually well suited for 

 the support of moUuscan hfe, though liable now and then 

 to inroads of the sea outside and to invasions of moUusca, 

 corals, and other marine forms. . , • 



The map, on a scale of four miles to an inch, is evi- 

 dently a piece of most careful work. It shows the 

 arrangement of the rocks from the Laurentian group up 

 to the Coal-measures, though, partly from vast uncon- 

 formabilities and partly from faults, great portions of the 

 geological series are not represented in this part of New- 

 foundland. It may be mentioned, in passing, that the 

 largest fault traced on the map— that which flanks the 

 Laurentian range from Table Mountain north-eastwards 

 to Grand Pond— is not coincident with the line of any 

 river but is crossed by all the chief rivers and brooks m 

 the district which it traverses. Hence the same relation 

 between fracture and erosion exists there which has been 

 so extensively traced and keenly discussed in this country. 

 To the completion of this important map geologists will 

 look forward with not less interest than must be taken by 

 those who see in the labours of Mr. Murray and his asso- 

 ciates one of the best pledges for the early development 

 of the colony. ^' ^* 



THE ANCIENT BRITISH PIG 



PROF. ROLLESTON has recently been making some researches 

 on swine, the discovery of some remains buried m the alluvium, 

 near Oxford, having directed his attention to the subject. In 

 illustration of a paper " On the Prehistoric British Sus, read 

 by him at the Linnean Society, June 15, the following specimens 

 were exhibited :— I. Skull of Sus scrofa, var. domesitcus, from 

 a late Celtic interment. 2. Skulls of Sus scroja, var. fetus, from 



