CARBONIFEROUS DISTRICT OF COLCHESTER AND HANTS. 271 



corals, and in tlie central or deeper parts of the area there were beds 

 of calcareous mud with comparatively few of these living creatures. 

 In the hills around, volcanoes of far greater antiquity than those 

 whose products we considered in a former chapter, were altering and 

 calcining the slaty and quartzose rocks ; and from their sides every 

 land-flood poured down streams of red sand and mud, while in many 

 places rills and springs, strongly impregnated with sulphuric acid, 

 were flowing or rising, and, entering the sea, decomposed vast 

 quantities of the carbonate of lime accumulated by shells and corals, 

 and converted it into snowy gypsum. Of the creatures that may have 

 crept or walked on the land, we know nothing except the hint afforded 

 by the few footprints found by Logan and Harding in the shales 

 of Horton and Parrsboro', and which testiiy that reptilian life in 

 some of its lower forms had already begun to exist. The sea had 

 already attained almost its maximum of productiveness in fishes and 

 creeping things, but we have no reason to believe that the land had 

 yet received from its Creator any of those higher creatures which 

 were destined to be introduced in a subsequent " creative day." 



Useful Minerals of the Hants and Colchester District. 



Gypsum is at present the pinncipal product of this district. It is 

 largely quarried at Windsor, Newport, Walton, Shubenacadie, and a 

 number of other places; and, in 1861, 124,241 tons* were quarried, 

 amounting to the value of over *83,000 at the ports of shipment. 

 The greater part of this large annual produce of gypsum is exported 

 to the United States for agricultural purposes. The quantity of gypsum 

 in this district is enormous, and probably cannot be exhausted by any 

 demand ever likely to occur. It is now quarried only in the places 

 most accessible to shipping, and its small value per ton indicates the 

 facility with which it can be obtained, in a country in which the price 

 of labour is by no means low. 



Limestone is also extremely abundant in this district, and might be 

 quan-icd and exported as readily as the gypsum. Limestone being 

 abundant in New Brunswick and in the United States, is not, however, 

 in demand for exportation, and the wants of the countiy are at present 

 small ; especially in a district in which the land is in most places well 

 supplied with calcareous matter. It may be anticipated, however, 

 that a demand will arise for lime to supply the wants of the shore- 

 districts, wliicli are almost entirely destitute of this mineral. 



Iron Ore occurs in veins traversing the Lower Carboniferous lime- 

 * 118,215 in Hants and 602G in Colchester. 



