664 SUMMARY OF THE HISTORY. 



has long been applied to economic uses ; and, in some places, its tex- 

 ture is such that it would afford an excellent marble, the beauty of 

 which is in some cases increased by the intermixture of green ser- 

 pentine, exactly as in the Laurentian limestones of the Ottawa. 

 Graphite also occui'S in large quantity, as already mentioned, and 

 though its quality is coarse and impure, it is possible that by subject- 

 ing it to the processes of mechanical purification now in use in other 

 countries, a valuable product might be obtained from it. Its nearness 

 to the city of St John, and to the great water power afforded by the 

 river, constitute inducements for further attempts to render it usefiU. 



Summary of the Geological History of Acadia. 



Descending from the Modern period, we have now reached those 

 rocks which constitute the lowest and oldest known foundations of 

 our continents, — rocks which, in the Acadian provinces, have been 

 almost wholly swept away or buried up in the formation of later 

 sediments. That there were rocks older even than these, we know, 

 from the circumstance that some of the beds above described are of a 

 fragniental character. That some forms of animal and vegetable life 

 already existed upon our earth — some of the creeping things of the 

 waters — we also know ; but of the old rocks which furnished the 

 matei'ial of the Laurentian beds, or the land which may have been 

 composed of them, we know nothing, — perhaps we never shall know 

 anything, — at least from the records of the rocks. Here, then, we 

 may turn from our descent into the bowels of the earth, and, I'ctracing 

 our steps, emerge once more into the light of day. In doing so we 

 may lightly glance, in the historic or ascending order, at the several 

 formations which we have described in detail in tlie opposite or 

 descending method. 



Beginning with Laurentian Acadia, we have before us an ocean of 

 whose shores we know nothing ; but in whose depths sandy and 

 argillaceous sediments are being deposited, and animals and plants of 

 the simplest structure are building up coral-like reefs, and accumu- 

 lating masses of fetid muddy vegetable matter, — the whole to be, in 

 process of time, converted by the magical alchemy of mother earth 

 into crystalline gneiss, marble, and graphite. As ages roll on, and carry 

 us into the Huronian period, the bed of tliis quiet sea is broken up, 

 rocky ridges are exposed to the destructive action of the waves, vol- 

 canoes belch forth their lavas, and discharge their showers of ashes 

 and scoriae. 



Another geologic age rolls by, and we see stretched out before us 

 the northern nucleus of the American continent extending westward 



