580 THE JOURNAL OF GEOLOGY. 



Cretaceous. 1 If the Jurassic exists on the west coast of British 

 Columbia, it must occupy very limited areas or be involved in 

 the pre-Cretaceous metamorphic complex. The fossils collected 

 in the less altered portions of this complex by Richardson and 

 Dawson, show the presence of Triassic and Carboniferous for- 

 mations, but no undoubted Jurassic forms have yet been detected. 

 It therefore seems that the erosion to which the region was sub- 

 jected prior to the deposition of the Cretaceous was effected in 

 Jurassic time. As Dawson has shown, 2 this erosion was of longer 

 duration in the southern part of the province than in the north- 

 ern, and the transgression of the Cretaceous sedimentation was 

 from north to south. 



The further studies of Dawson upon the pre-Cretaceous com- 

 plex of granite and metamorphics have been fruitful of most 

 interesting and important results. Prior to his researches the 

 granite (and granite-gneisses) of the region were generally 

 regarded as the equivalent of the Laurentian of the east. It 

 was shown, 3 however, by him that the basement upon which the 

 now metamorphic sedimentary and volcanic strata of the Van- 

 couver series (Triassic, with probably some Carboniferous), was 

 deposited is non-existent, and has been replaced by an immense 

 mass of intrusive granite, which has absorbed by fusion all rocks 

 below the present remnants of the Vancouver series, and has 

 invaded the latter after the manner of an irruptive magma. This 

 post-Triassic granitic batholite is of enormous dimensions. In 

 the fall of 1890 the writer had an opportunity of examining it 

 cursorily for a distance in a straight line of over five hundred 

 miles, in and out of the fiords of the coast from Burrard Inlet to 

 Alaska ; and the granite is known to extend far northward into 

 that territory. Its width may be placed at from sixty to one 



1 Sketch of the Geology of British Columbia, by G. M. Dawson, Geol. Mag., April 

 and May, 1881. 



2 Am. Jour. Sci., Vol. xxxix., March, 1890. 



3 Annual Report (New Series), Vol. ii., 1886, Geol. Survey of Canada, Report B, 

 PP. 10-13. 



