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impassable to the casual traveller, and the coasts of which are of 

 very difficult access. He deserves, therefore, so much the more our 

 thanks for having pioneered the way under many difficulties, and 

 for giving us this outline reconnaissance of the geological structure 

 of a colony, to become well acquainted with which will require 

 elaborate surveys, conducted by those who have previously made 

 themselves masters of the keystones of succession in the adjacent 

 continent. When, therefore, the true geological equivalents of 

 Canada and Nova Scotia shall have been thoroughly established by 

 the researches of Mr. Logan, and placed in exact relation to the 

 well-developed rocks of the United States, the obscurity which 

 shrouds Newfoundland may be dispelled*. 



Secojidary and Tertiary Rocks^ and superficial deposits of North 

 America. — In my Address of last year I had no hesitation in pre- 

 dicting, that geologists would reap great instruction from the visit 

 of Mr, Lyell to the United States. The earlier sketches which he 

 sent to us, including accounts of the Palaeozoic rocks, might be taken, 

 indeed, as some earnest of what was to follow, and as we are 

 well acquainted with his powei's of generalizing and habits of 

 faithful research, we could not well over-estimate the amount of 

 production at his hands. The docuiuents which he has laid before 

 you have fully justified our anticipations. One of his memoirs, on 

 the Tertiary formations and their connexion with the chalk in Vir- 

 ginia, North and South Carolina, and other parts of the United 

 States, has a very important bearing in showing the amount of 

 agreement of those deposits with the strata of similar age in Europe. 

 Noticing with due approbation the works of Professors W. B. and 

 H. D. Rogers and Mr. Conrad, on the Teitiary rocks of Virginia, 

 he shows, that certain deposits above the chalk are of true Eocene 

 character, and never contain Secondary fossils or any forms inter- 

 mediate between the newer Secondary and older Tertiary types. 

 These Eocene beds are surmounted by rich shelly deposits, the con- 

 tents of which bear a great generic resemblance to those of the 

 Suffolk crag and the Faluns of Touraine, and are therefore refer- 

 able to the Miocene epoch. 



In North Carolina, black shales, first described by Mr. Hodge, 

 are shown to be of the cretaceous age by containing Belemnites, 

 Exogyrae, Grypheeas and Ostraese, a few of the species being Avell 

 known in Europe, and found by myself in the distant parts of 

 Russia. This cretaceous deposit is covered by a peculiar calca- 

 reous rock, the Wilmington limestone and conglomerate, which had 

 been termed Upper Secondary, and supposed to indicate a passage 

 from the Secondary to the Tertiary periods, but in which Mr. Lyell 

 could detect no organic remains to support that opinion, the only 



* I regret that I accidentally omitted to call attention in my last Address 

 to a short memoii-, read during the preceding session by Mr. Henwood, 

 upori the Silurian Rocks of Lockport near Niagara. Having long been 

 assiduously occupied in his native county Cornwall in studying the mineral- 

 ization of rocks, Mr, Henwood is, 1 understand, about to publish a work on 

 the metalliferous deposits of Cornwall and Devon. 



