47 



complicated structure of the rock masses which compose the mountain 

 ranges, and the faulted, crumpled and widely different character of much 

 of the strata on either side have given rise to a great diversity of 

 opinion regarding their true position in the geological scale. In Canada 

 these problems have been discussed mostly under the head of the Quebec 

 group, while in the adjoining States the fight has been carried on under 

 the name of the Taconic controversy. 



The earliest expressed views of Sir "Wm. Logan, in 1847, assumed 

 that the age of the mountain ridges of the Eastern Townships was pro- 

 bably that of the Hudson River division of the New York geologists. 

 Although the rocks were for the most part in a highly crystalline con- 

 dition, they were supposed to be the raetamorphic equivalents of the 

 comparatively unaltered and frequently highly fossiliferous sediments 

 which occupied the greater part of the country between their slopes and 

 the St. Lawrence. All traces of these fossils were held to be eliminated 

 by the process of metamorphism to which the strata had been subjected, 

 and by which, also, the shales and sandstones were converted into highly 

 crystalline schists and chlorite rocks. 



This view as to the metamorphism of the fossiliferous strata of the 

 south side of the river was maintained by most workers in this field for 

 nearly twenty-five years, although the opinion formerly expressed as to 

 the Hudson River age had been modified in 1860 by Sir Wm. Logan,, 

 owing to the discovery of a great series of fossils in the rocks about 

 Point Levis and at other points which clearly indicated that their true 

 position was at the bottom of the Cambro-Silurian system rather than 

 at the top as had so long been supposed. As early, however, as 1862, 

 Mr. Thomas Macfarlane compared the crystalline schists and associated 

 rocks of the Eastern Townships with the upper part of the primitive 

 schist formation of Norway, and also with the copper-bearing series of 

 Lake Superior. The resemblance of the two series was also pointed out 

 by Sir Wm. Logan, in the Geology of Canada, 1863. The Huronian 

 aspect and probable age of these crystalline rocks was first recognized 

 and publicly stated by Dr. Hunt, in 1871, and later, in 1877, by Dr. 

 Selwyn, while in the late report on this portion of Quebec by the writer, 

 18S6, these rocks are described under the general term Pi'e-Cambrian, 

 by which is meant that they constitute a group unconformably beneath 



