^h 



370 



THE AZOIC SYSTEM AND ITS SUBDIVISIONS 



The relation of the rocks as given by the preceding writers has been 

 giveu so far as we are able to make it out in the table appended. 



In 1878 Dr. T. Sterry Hunt remarked : 



" In a paper on the Geology of St. John County, New Brunswick, published 

 in the Canadian Naturalist in 18G3, and reprinted in part in the geological 

 report of Canada for 1870-71, page 23, Mr. George F. Matthew described, under 

 the name of the Coldbrook group, a great mass of crystalline strata found in 

 southern New Brunswick, to the east of the river St. John. These rocks 

 repose on the Laurentian, and underlie unconformably the uncrystalline Lower 

 Cambrian slates of the city of St. John, which include, near th(;ir base, con- 

 glomerates holding fragments of the Coldbrook group. From this, and frcnn 

 their lithological characters, these older rocks were, by Matthew, referred soon 

 after to the Huronian series. (Quar. Jour. Geol. Soc, Nov., I8G5.) They 

 have since been found to rest unconformably upon the Laurentian, pebl)lcs of 

 ■which are contained in the conglomerates of the Coldbrook group. In the 

 paper which contained his account of the Coldbrook group, in 1803, Mr. Mat- 

 thew described a second belt of crystalline rocks simiLir to these, to wldch he 

 gave the name of the Bloomsbury group. These, apparently restiug upon Lhe 

 Menevian, and conformably overlaid by the fossiliferous Devonian sandstones 

 of St. John, were, at that time, called by him altered Devonian strata. In 

 18G9 and 1870, however, the writer devoted some weeks, in connection with 

 Trof. L. W. Bailey and Mr. Matthew, to the iuvcstigation of the geul()gy of 

 southern New Brunswick, when it appeared that the Bloomsbury rocks were 

 but a repetition of the Coldbrook group on the opposite side of a closely folded 

 synclinal holding Lower Cambrian sediments. Accordingly, in the geological 

 report of the gentleman just named, both of these belts were desiguuLed as 

 Huronian ; in which were now also included two other subdivisions of crys- 

 talline rocks found in that region, and previously designated the Coastal and 

 Kingston groups. (Report of Geol Sur., 1870-71, pages 27, 60, 64.) These 

 Huronian rocks were traced in 1869 and 1870 along the southern coast ol New 

 Brunswick, from the head of the Bay of Fundy to the confines of Maine, as 

 was stated by the writer in July, 1 870, when these rocks ' called Cambrian 

 and Huronian by Mr. Matthew,' and characterized by the occurrence of diontes 

 and quart/.iferous feldspar-porphyries, were said to occur hi Eastport, Miime, 

 and in Newbury, Salem, Lynn and Marblehead, Massachusetts. (Amer. Jour. 

 Science, II. 1, 89.)" (A^^oic Rocks, 1878, pp. 188, 189.) 



It would seem that Dr. Hunt's memory must have been at fault, 

 since the views of Messrs. Matthew and Bailey are indiscriminately 

 mingled with his own, while the sequence of time at which these views 

 were presented is generally disregarded. We cannot find, in cither of 

 the papers of Mr, Matthew to which Dr. Hunt refers, any evidence that 

 the St. John^ocks unconformably overlie the Coldbrook rocks, or that 

 the former contain pebbles derived from the latter. Mr. Matthew ex- 



