458 



THE AZOIC SYSTEM AND ITS SUBDIVISIONS. 



iiig order (1) granular quartz rock, (2) the Stoclcbridge limestone with its 

 interstfatified and overlying micaceous schistB, and (3) argitlites, including roof- 

 ing alates, constitutes a distinct geological horizon of rocks essentially crystal- 

 line, having an aggregate thickness of about five thousand feet. These are 

 found resting alike on Laurentian, Huronian, and Montalban strata, and are 



overlaid, probably unconformably, by the Cambrian (Upper Taconic) 



They are apparently identical with the groat limestone series which, in ITaa- 

 tings county, Ontario, underlies unconformal)ly the Trenton group of lime- 

 stones, and near St. John, New Brunswick, is beneath the Mencvian, slates.'* 



During the same year the Taconian series was said by Dr. Hunt to 

 include the statuary marbles of North Am(3rica, and to be overlain 

 *' by the Upper Taconic, which is identical with the Quebec Group of 

 Logan." (Nature, 1878, XVIIL, p. 444 ; Geol. Mag., 1878, (2) V., 



p. 471.) 



In 1879, Dr. Hunt gives us to understand that in 1863, wh(m he 



referred the Green Mountain rocks to the Quebec Group, in the "Ge- 

 ology of Ganada," he then regarded them as Huronian, but that ''official 

 reasons then, and for some yea.rs after, prevented the writer from expressing 

 any dissent from the views of the director of the geological survey of 

 Canada:' (Proc. Am. Assoc. Adv. Sci., 1879, XXVIIL, p. 285* Am. 

 Jour. Sci., 1880, (3) XIX., p. 273.) 



It would seem from the remarks we have quoted from his papers* 

 that the " official reasons " not only prevented his dissenting from Sir 

 William Logan's views, but also caused him to affirm their correctness 

 in the strongest possible manner. And in connection with this state- 

 ment of Dr. Hunt's, it will be well to refer to one which follows, made 

 by him in 1871 : 



" My opportunities for studying the Huronian had been very imperfect. 

 . ... It was not, therefore, till I saw the Huronian rocks displayed along the 

 coast of New Brunswick (1869-70), that I realized how much they were like 

 the Green Mt. rocks." (Geol. of Wise, 1880, III., p. 658.) 



How again does Dr. Hunt's statement made in 1879 agree with that 

 of 1875, in which reference is made to a paper read in 1863 advocating 

 the pala;ozoic age of the rocks of the Green and White Mountains^ 

 The statement made in 1875 reads as follows : 



" My own extended studies of these rocks in the Green Mountains, in New 

 Brunswickj and on Lakes Superior and Huron, have since convinced me that 

 this view is correct, and that the Green Mountain series is represented in the 

 crystalline strata around the great lakes just mentioned ; and, moreover, that 



* Sec antCf pp. 441-i45. 



