GENERAL REMARKS. 581 



part Devonian, and there is no reason to believe any of them to be 

 older than Upper Silurian. I would therefore refer the great line of 

 dislocation of the Cobequids, which runs nearly W. 10° S., as well as 

 the nearly parallel lines of the south mountains of King's County, the 

 range ending in Cape Porcupine, and most of the hills of Cape Breton, 

 to the close of the Devonian period. These ranges have, however, 

 been broken and deranged in places, as at the eastern end of the 

 Cobequids, the Antigonish Mountains, the hills near Guysboro', 

 and in the south-west of Cape Breton, by disturbances probably coeval 

 with the great Alleghany range, that is, at or toward the end of the 

 Carboniferous system, and there is evidence that between this time 

 and the end of the Devonian period, igneous action was constantly 

 more or less felt, and was also accompanied by elevatory movements. 

 Hence these later movements in part, as along the Cobequid range, 

 have conformed to the course of the older movement, and in part have 

 broken out into irregular projecting ridges, having a tendency to a 

 north-east and south-west direction. In short, the study of these 

 elevations in Nova Scotia tends to show, that though there may be 

 a certain parallelism between elevatory movements of the same period, 

 when they take place in districts previously undisturbed, yet that in 

 regions broken up by previous dislocations, they may either conform 

 in direction to these, or break forth irregularly from them along lines 

 of least resistance produced by previous transverse fractures. It is to 

 be observed, however, that those very marked and important physical 

 changes which closed the Devonian period were preluded by volcanic 

 outbursts extending through the Upper Silurian and Devonian eras. 



In New Brunswick, the area occupied by the Kingston group is 

 broken and elevated, and separates what may be termed the southern 

 bay of the Carboniferous area from the remainder. As an ancient 

 geographical feature, it is also connected with the large development 

 of Lower Carboniferous rocks in this bay or arm. Still, it is not 

 sufficiently extensive or continuous to give it any great importance in 

 the present drainage of the country. The great Upper Silurian area 

 in Northern New Brunswick is of much more importance in this 

 respect, and contains the principal sources of the St John and the 

 Restigouche ; the former of which, the largest river of Acadia, 

 gathering the waters of many tributaries from a great area chiefly 

 of Upper Silurian rocks, finds a devious path through transverse 

 valleys of the great Lower Silurian bolt, crosses the south-west 

 angle of the Carboniferous area, and entering the Silurian band of 

 the coast, follows its strike for some distance in the " Long Reach " 

 before it finds its way to the sea. 



