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TWENTY-FOUETH ORDINARY MEETING. 295 



the subject have been made, principally by Sir W. E. Logan, Drs. 

 Hunt, Dawson, and Harringtoi^ Professor Dawkins, and Messrs. 

 Yennor, Broome, Willimott, Kinahan and Torrance. 



The scientific aspects of the subject are discussed more particularly 

 by Dr. Harrington in the Geological Survey Report for 1877-'78, 

 and by Dr. Hunt in several of the Survey Reports, and also in an 

 excellent paper in the Proceedings of the American Institute of 

 Mining Engineers, in which he gives valuable statistics of the pro- 

 duction of Apatite in the Dominion. The rapid progress which has 

 been made in mining the Apatite during the last two or three years, 

 has enabled us to obtain some additional light on this question. 



"With the exception of one localit}^ at Lake Clear, in the County of 

 Renfrew, the workable deposits as yet known are confined to two 

 areas having similar geological characters and relations, the one 

 running north, in the County of Ottawa, and the othefH^uth-west, 

 through parts of Lanark, Leeds, and Frontenac. Apatite has been 

 found in other regions in Canada, but for the present I shall confine 

 my remarks to the two areas I have mentioned, and moreparticularly, 

 to the one in the County of Ottawa, which latter I have had more 

 opportunities of examining than the other. 



The Apatite-bearing rocks belong, as is well known, to the Lau- 

 rentian system, and they appear to constitute one of the higher 

 members of the series. Although the Laurentian system extends 

 over such vast tracts of country in the northern regions of the 

 Dominion, rocks like those among which the Apatite occurs appear 

 to occupy but a small proportion of the whole area. In the great 

 regions referred to, scarcely anything is to be found but wearisome 

 repetitions of the commonest varieties of greyish and reddish fel- 

 spathic and quartzose gneisses — massive, highly ciystalline, hard, 

 granitoid, or not much more cleavable in the direction of the lami- 

 nation than across it, greatly contorted on the small scale, and so 

 much disturbed on the large scale that it would be almost impossible; 

 to map out all the windings and foldings in any given given area. 

 In the Apatite-bearing regions on the other hand, the rocks on the 

 large scale, or geographically speaking, are arranged in great belts, 

 differing more or less from one another, and individually traceable 

 for long distances, in which they maintain their distinctive characters. 

 The limestone bands which they contain constitute the great dis- 

 tinguishing feature in which these strata differ from the bulk of the 



