The Phosphates of America. 37 



Despite the great attention and care with which we have our- 

 selves examined numerous specimens of the Canadian apatites taken 

 from various points over the entire formation, we have failed to 

 discover by means of the microscope the least trace of anything 

 that would lead us personally to connect them with organic life. 

 We prefer to ascribe them to a decomposition of the pyroxenite by 

 a process of segregation similar to that which in other places has 

 resulted in the production of quartz and orthoclase, and we can see 

 no reason for making any distinction between the character of the 

 deposits. According to Dr. T. Sterry Hunt, the stratiform char- 

 acter of these endogenous deposits, as seen alike in the individual 

 portions and in the arrangement of these as constituent parts of a 

 vein, is well shown at the Union mine, in the Lievres district. 

 Here the great mass or lode is seen to be bounded on the west by 

 a dark-colored amphibolic gneiss, nearly vertical in attitude, and 

 with northwest strike. Within the vein, and near its western 

 border, is enclosed a fragment of the gneiss, about twenty feet in 

 width, which is traced some yards along the strike of the vein to a 

 cliff, where it is lost from sight, its breadth being previously much 

 diminished. It is a sharply broken mass of gray banded gneiss, 

 with a re-entering angle, and its close contact with the surround- 

 ing and adherent coarsely granular pyroxenic veinstone is very 

 distinct. Smaller masses of the same gneiss are also seen in the 

 vein, which was observed for a breadth of about 150 feet across its 

 strike (nearly coincident with that of the adjacent gneiss), and be- 

 yond was limited to the northeast by a considerable breadth of the 

 same country-rock. 



In one opening on this lode there are seen, in a section of forty 

 feet of the banded veinstone, repeated layers of apatite, pyroxenite 

 and a granitoid quartzo-feldspathic rock, including portions of dark 

 brown foliated pyroxene, all three of these being unlike anything 

 in the enclosing gneiss, but so distinctly banded as to be readily 

 taken for country-rock by those not apprised of the venous char- 

 acter of the mass. A fracture, with a lateral displacement of two 

 or three feet, is occupied by a granitic vein twelve inches wide, 

 made up of quartz with two feldspars and black amphibole, which 

 themselves present a distinctly banded arrangement. This same 

 granitic vein is traced for fifty feet, cutting obliquely across both 

 the pyroxenite and the older granitoid rock, and at length spreads 

 out, and is confounded with a granitic mass interbedded in the 

 greater vein. It is thus posterior alike to the older quartzo-feld- 



