78 Essay on the Tratisition Rocks of the Cataraqui. 



This specimen (fig. 5,) is of a grey color, and even the columns 

 glitter with the siliceous particles of the cherty limestone of which it 

 is composed. The prisms are broken, sharp, and not so soft or needle 

 like as the Kingston ones ; nor have they the bituminous or hair like 

 appearance although their conformation is otherwise the same : I be- 

 lieve they are not common at the falls, never having seen any other 

 specimen than this one from that locality. 



Nature appears to have been in one of her most varying moods 

 when the rocks and minerals of the neighborhood of the Cataraqui 

 were formed, as in so small a littoral as that embraced by the wa- 

 ters of the Ontario and those of the Cataraqui and Gananoqui rivers, 

 almost every variety of the primitive and transition classes with the 

 confused detritus of ancient convulsions in the forms of boulders, 

 sands, gravels and mud, are to be found without much difficulty. I 

 have now before me, a mass of limestone glittering with calcareous 

 spangles, in which is imbedded a large piece of basanite of the shape 

 of the valve of a huge terebratula, but which, on closer examination, 

 looks more as though it had been a flattened trilobite, and every day 

 brings forth some new and equally curious variations from the usual 

 appearances in similar geological associations. 



But, although nature is so singularly sportive in her mineral crea- 

 tions on these hills, she appears to have been determined to withhold 

 the evidence of the ages of the rocks as far as she possibly could in 

 the remains of the animal kingdom. In a long and extensive course 

 of quarrying, embracing nearly four years, only one perfect fossil 

 was discovered and that the entomolithus paradoxicus, of which, from 

 its comparative rarity in this locality, I cannot avoid giving the follow- 

 ing drawing, figs. 6, (a,) and 6, (5.) The terebratular family are 

 however, more numerous, some of the lower plateaux of the tran- 

 sition limestone being filled with their remains which are sometimes 

 in a very perfect state ; these, with a very limited number of the 

 strange fossil of the orthoceratite tribe, named recently the Huronia, 

 are the chief and indeed almost the only fossils which have been 

 discovered here. In a future number of this essay, I hope to be 

 able to depict a specimen of the tables mentioned in the first part, 

 in which the Huronia reposes. The larger orthocerites hitherto 

 discovered and of the pointed conical form are more numerous, 

 but in general are in a very weather worn state. One or two I have 

 recently seen which reached the great length of nearly five feet, and 

 which I shall probably again revert to ; but it is now time that we 



