104 GEOLOGICAL AREAS OF CANADA. 



■will belong to the first district ; and the great triangular area extend- 

 ing east and north of the lines to the Gulf shore, will form the second 

 or Carboniferous district. 



(1.) The. Western and Southern District. — The geological structure 

 of this region is of a very complicated character. Most of its strata 

 are in an altered or metamorphic condition, and are more or less 

 broken up, contorted, and intermixed ; whilst faultings and overturn 

 dips are of frequent occurrence amongst them, thus adding, in many- 

 cases, to the general obscurity of their age. In the present state of 

 our knowledge, the district is most conveniently described under two 

 subdivisions, as below : 



(^) The Western Division.- — This may be assumed to include the 

 country lying west of the line described above as running from 

 Nipisiguit Bay to Lake Oromocto. It thus includes the Counties of 

 Ristigouche, Victoria, and Carleton, with the chief part of York, and 

 the north-west portion of Northumberland. Its surface consists very 

 generally of extended plains, cut by numerous river-valleys, and 

 heavily wooded throughout. The average elevation above the sea is, 

 probably, under 500 feet, but isolated mountains in its more northern 

 limits attain to elevations of from 1,500 to over 2,000 feet. The 

 principal rivers comprise the head- waters and upper course of the St. 

 John, with its numerous tributaries, including the Tobique, the 

 Beccaguimic, &c. ; and the upper portions of the Miramichi, Nipisiguit, 

 and Ristigouche. The rock-formations within it consist principally 

 of a series of micaceous and other slates, with quartzose and argUlo- 

 calcareous strata, dipping at high angles and greatly contorted in 

 places ; whilst over a broad tract of country, extending from Grand 

 Lake on the Province boundary-line, in a general north-easterly 

 direction to the vicinity of the Bay of Chaleurs, they are associated 

 with long belts of granitic rock. The slates, quartzites, and other 

 altered strata, are regarded mainly as Upper Silurian formations, from 

 a few characteristic fossils discovered in some of their beds, but older 

 formations (as seen in the Southern Division of the District) may 

 perhaps occur among them. The granites are probably in chief part, 

 if not wholly, of Devonian age. Copperpyrites, and beds of slaty 

 hematite, occur in these altered strata in the neighbourhood of 

 Woodstock; and veins of antimony ore in the Parish of Prince 

 William, between Woodstock and Fredericton. The only other 

 formations — apart from superficial deposits — recognized within this 



