182 Reviews — Minerals of Canada. 



IX. — Preliminary Report on the Mineral Production of Canada 



DURING THE CALENDAR YEAR 1915. By JoHN McLEISH. Ottawa, 



Government Printing Bureau, 1916. pp. 28. 



TI^HE report reveals very clearly how greatly the mineral industry 

 1 was stimulated hy the War, the demand for the metals 

 copper, lead, nickel, and zinc being specially great. The steel 

 furnaces were worked to their utmost capacity. Further, the 

 development of smelting and refining operations has been greatly 

 stimulated, since it was desirable that for such necessary adjuncts 

 the country should not be dependent on even a friendly neutral 

 country. The production of copper increased 72, of lead 56, and 

 nickel 49£ per cent in value. Canada produced during the year 

 nearly 3 million dollars worth of gold. 



EEPOETS -A-HSTiD PROOEEDI1TG-S. 



Geological Society of London. 



1. February 7, 1917.— Dr. Alfred Harker, F.R.S., President, in the 



Chair. 



The following communications were read : — 



1. " The Trias of New Zealand." By Charles Tavlor Trechmann, 

 M.Sc, F.G.S. 



The fossiliferous Triassic rocks of New Zealand have been wholly 

 or in part at different times attributed by the geologists of that 

 Dominion to a Devonian, Permian, Permo-Carboniferous, Lower, 

 Middle, or Upper Triassic, or Trias-Jura age. A review of the 

 previous research on these rocks and of their correlation and nomen- 

 clature is given. They are quite distinct from the Matai rocks, 

 which contain a Permo-Carboniferous fauna. 



Triassic beds appear at intervals from Kawhia on the western 

 coast of the North Island to Nugget Point on the south-eastern coast 

 of the South Island — a distance of 620 miles. Except in two 

 localities, they are everywhere very steeply inclined, and where they 

 approach the Alpine Chain of the South Island pass into semi- 

 metaraorphic greywackes or completely metamorphic phyllites and 

 schists. They are of great thickness. A short description of the 

 special faunal, lithic, and tectonic features of each of the more 

 important localities is given, all of which but one occur in the South 

 Island. In the North Island only the Noric and Rhsetic horizons 

 have been recoguized. Wherever the sequence is preserved, the 

 Trias passes conformably up into Jurassic deposits. 



The lowest fossiliferous horizon of the Trias occurs near the top 

 of a great thickness of greywackes and conglomerates called the 

 Kaihiku Series, and is separated by several hundred feet from the 

 next fossiliferous beds above it. The Kaihiku fossils are scanty in 

 species, and no Cephalopods occur. Among those restricted to this 

 horizon is Daonella indiea, Bittner, which occurs in Ladino-Carnic 

 deposits in the Himalayas and in the Malay Archipelago. Members 

 or survivors of a Muschelkalk fauna occur in the form of Spiri/erina 



