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The stratified rocks associated with the serpentines are black, 

 green, grey and purple slates, with, occasionally, conglomerates, and 

 sometimes beds of hard quartzose sandstone. The diorites, with which 

 they are intimately associated, frequently form great mountain masses, 

 as at Orford, Ham, Thetford, etc., and in texture are both massive 

 and concretionary, while in color they range from shades of green to 

 brown. 



The serpentines are in places penetrated by dykes and sometimes 

 considerable areas of a hard, whitish granite or granulite, often com- 

 posed entirely of quartz and orthoclase felspar, but at times containing 

 an admixture of mica, Whatever may be the age of these granite 

 dykes, they certainly are newer than the rock with which they are now 

 associated, since they are frequently seen to cut directly across the 

 serpentines and to produce an alteration in the mass at the contact ; 

 and the view is held by many of those engaged in mining asbestus that 

 the influence of the dykes upon the serpentine which they penetrate is 

 apparently the same in regard to the favorable production of asbestus 

 veins as the presence of diorite dykes on copper or other mineral-bearing 

 strata in the production of metalliferous lodes. 



In Qtiebec the serpentine extends for many miles, and is found at 

 intervals from the Vermont boundary almost to the extremity of Gaspe, 

 the most easterly outcrop in this direction being what is known as 

 Mount Serpentine, on the Dartmouth River, about eleven miles from 

 its outlet into Gaspe Basin. It presents a very large development in 

 the Shick -Shock Mountains, where, at the south west extremity, a spur 

 from the main mass cuts strata of hard dolomitic limestone and con- 

 glomerate in a dyke-like mass of 150 feet in width. Further west, 

 though outcrops may exist in the great belt of comparatively unknown 

 lands in rear of River Du Loup and Rimouski, its presence is not yet 

 known in this direction till we reach the road leading south from St. 

 Thomas to the boundary of Maine, about forty-four miles east of the 

 Chaudiere River. There several small knolls are found which appar- 

 ently mark the eastern termination of the Cambrian volcanic belt. 

 Further west, the serpentine occurs in limited areas with the dioritic 

 masses of Cranbourne and Ware, and in several small outcrops on the 

 Chaudiere between St. Joseph and St. Francis ; but in the Townships 



