PRE-CAMBRIAN ROCKS OF NEWFOUNDLAND 469 



The beds seen by the writer are strongly ripple-marked, blackish- 

 gray, thin-bedded, very fine-grained, shaly sandstones, with thin 

 films of black carbonaceous or graphitic shale. In thin section the 

 sandstone is seen to be made up of sharply angular grains of quartz, 

 with an occasional fresh feldspar fragment and bits of carbonaceous 

 material. The grains average about 0.05 mm. in diameter. 



From a lithologic point of view the most striking feature of these 

 rocks is their content of carbonaceous material, which, although 

 slight and often absent, yet serves to contrast them with the over- 

 lying and underlying formations. In contrast to the succeeding 

 reddish-brown feldspathic sandstone formation, the gray, fine- 

 grained quartz sandstones and shales of the Momable suggest an 

 origin under a permanent water-level at shallow depths in 

 which flourished organisms whose presence is indicated by the 

 carbonaceous content of the shales and by the possible fossil 

 Aspidella. 



Attention has been called by many observers to the resemblance 

 between the gold-bearing series of Nova Scotia and Murray's 

 Intermediate series of Newfoundland. It is to the beds comprising 

 the Conception, Torbay, and Momable series lying below the Signal 

 Hill series and above the Avondale volcanics that this lithologic 

 resemblance applies. Judging from Fairbault's descriptions (Mal- 

 com, 191 2, pp. 46-47) the Goldenville quartzites present certain 

 resemblances to the Conception slate series, the banded argillite 

 division of the western part of the field to the Torbay series, and 

 the Halifax formation to the Momable series. Specimens of the 

 Halifax slate collected by the writer from an outcrop in the yards 

 of the Canadian Pacific terminal at Halifax are indeed indistinguish- 

 able, except for a more prevalent cleavage, from many characteristic 

 specimens of the Momable series. Before any correlation may be 

 suggested, however, it is necessary that a more intimate knowledge 

 of the conformable or unconformable relations within the New- 

 foundland series shall be known, as well as more definite information 

 concerning the relations of the gold-bearing series of Nova Scotia 

 to the Cambrian. The Momable beds are also similar to the 

 Animikie sediments as described by Coleman in respect to their 

 content of carbonaceous material. 



