THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 97 
GEOLOGICAL NOTES. 
Read before the Geological Section of the Hamilton Association. 
BY COL. C. C. GRANT. 
NOTES ON OUR LOCAL BUILDING STONES. 
It was suggested a few months ago that some notes on the 
rock material used in Hamilton for building purposes might prove 
acceptable to the public, if not to our own section. 
I had some doubts on this point, feeling many various 
interests were nearly connected with it, however important the mat- 
ter might be. 
One frequently hears the view expressed that our Niagara 
Escarpment (erroneously called the mountain) furnishes very tndzf- 
ferent building stone. The prejudice against it in many instances (so 
widely entertained) arises chiefly from careless, injudicious selection. 
Our great drawback here is that the best beds are not easily accessible, 
and a considerable amount of comparatively useless stuff (chert and 
shales) must be utilized or got rid of in some way before we reach 
the more valuable layers underlying the local chert beds, now used 
for macadamizing purposes. The under portion of the chert resting 
on the soft shale capping, what the quarrymen here call the “ blue 
building beds,” may be, perhaps, used for foundations and under- 
ground cellars. It certainly is more suited for such purposes than 
the rotten material, crumbling shale, which unfortunately is used for 
their construction too frequently. 
(Great ignorance prevails regarding the texture and durability of 
building stones, not alone in Canada but in the States as well. In 
a lesser degree this may be said of other countries also, but there, 
take Europe for instance, structures which have existed for ages are 
available for determining how the material has stood the weathering 
process, and it can be traced generally to the original place from 
whence it came. In the Old Country we have learned from exper- 
lence that drown sandstones are not durable freestones, even where 
