June 8, 1888.] 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



547 



The author referred to the fact that since 1845 he had 

 contributed to the Proceedings of the Geological Society 

 a number of papers on the geology of the eastern mari- 

 time provinces of Canada, and it seemed useful now to 

 sum up the geology of the older formations and make 

 such corrections and comparisons as seemed warranted 

 by the new facts obtained by himself, and by other 

 observers of whom mention is made in the paper. 



With reference to the Laurentian, he maintained its 

 claim to be regarded as a regularly stratified system, 

 probably divisible into two or three series, and charac- 

 terised in its middle or upper portion by the accumula- 

 tion ol organic limestone, carbonaceous beds, and iron- 

 ores on a vast scale. He also mentioned the almost 

 universal prevalence in the northern hemisphere of the 

 great plications of the crust which terminated this 

 period, and which necessarily separate it from all suc- 

 ceeding deposits. He next detailed its special develop- 

 ment on the coast of the Atlantic, and the similarity of 

 this with that found in Great Britain and elsewhere in 

 the west of Europe. 



The Huronian he defined as a littoral series of deposits 

 skirting the shores of the old Laurentian uplifts, and 

 referred to some rocks which may be regarded as more 

 oceanic equivalents. Its characters in Newfoundland, 

 Cape Breton, and New Brunswick were referred to, and 

 compared with the Pebidian, etc., in England. The 

 questions as to an Upper Member of the Huronian or an 

 intermediate series, the Basal Cambrian of Matthew in 

 New Brunswick, were discussed. 



The very complete series of Cambrian rocks now 

 recognised on the coast-region of Canada was noticed, in 

 connection with its equivalency in details to the Cam- 

 brian of Britain and of Scandinavia, and the peculiar 

 geographical conditions implied in the absence of the 

 Lower Cambrian over a large area of interior America. 

 In the Ordovician age a marginal and a sub-marginal 

 area existed on the east coast of America. The formtr 

 is represented largely by bedded igneous rocks, the 

 latter by the remarkable series named, by Logan, the 

 Quebec Group, which was noticed in detail in connection 

 with its equivalents further west, and also in Europ;. 



The Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous were then 

 treated of, and detailed evidence shown as to their con- 

 formity to the tjpes of Western Europe rather than to 

 those of America. 



In conclusion it was pointed out that though the great 

 systems of formations can be recognised throughout the 

 Northern Hemisphere, their divisions must differ in the 

 maritime and inland regions, and that hard and fast lines 

 should not be drawn at the confines of systems, nor 

 widely different formations of the same age reduced to 

 an arbitrary uniformity of classification not sanctioned 

 by nature. It was also inferred that the evidence 

 pointed to a permanent continuance of the Atlantic 

 basin, though with great changes of its boundaries, and 

 to a remarkable parallelism of the formations deposited 

 on its eastern and western sides. 



" On a Hornblende-biotite Rock from Dusky Sound, 

 New Zealand." By Captain F. W. Hutton, F.G.S. 



The rock is of eruptive origin, and is associated with 

 Archaean schists and gneisses. It is compact, crystalline, 

 ofa dark green colour, and sp. gr. 3-00 — S'oy. It is com- 

 posed of two minerals in nearly equal proportions, one 

 of which, a black mica, has the two optic axes nearly 

 coinciding. The other mineral is of a pale bluish-green 

 colour, and moderately dichroic ; it shows an aggregate I 



polarisation of rather coarse grains, with here and there 

 distinct crystals of considerable size. Often one side of 

 a crystal shows a single twin, while the otner side is 

 polysynthetic. The optical characters are those of the 

 monoclinic system, and further investigation proves 

 these crystals to be hornblende. The mineral which 

 shows aggregate polarisation is either crushed horn- 

 blende or some altered form of it. 



MANCHESTER MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 

 At the meeting held on May 3rd, Mr. Percy F. Kendall, 

 Bishop Berkley Fellow and Assistant Lecturer on Geo- 

 logy at the Owen's College, read a paper on " Meteor- 

 ites." He remarked that although meteorites belonged 

 more to the domain of telescopy the microscope has re- 

 vealed facts which have enabled scientists to draw im- 

 portant conclusions as to their internal structure. They 

 have been known from remote antiquity, being mentioned 

 by Greek writers of 3,000 years ago, and also by the 

 Chinese, who have kept records of those observed 

 during a period of 700 or 800 j'ears. Yet their existence 

 has lately been disputed by certain French scientists. A 

 fall took place in France, and the Government sent an 

 eminent scientist to investigate, and his report proved 

 that in a considerable district of Normandy, a glare had 

 been seen in the sky in daylight, accompanied by a series 

 of detonations, and that a man had been struck by some 

 object falling from the; sky. Many stones were found 

 lying on the ground, 2,000 of which were collected. 

 These three phenomena — the passage of a fire-ball, a loud 

 noise, and a fall of stones — have been observed over and 

 over again, but it does not necessarily follow that they 

 should all be observed in each instance. A remarkable 

 fact about the fall of meteorites is that the detonation 

 succeeds the fall of stones, proving that the meteorite 

 travels faster ,than the sound. Mr. Kendall examined 

 the phenomena seriatim, dealing first with the flash of 

 light in the sky. Meteorites are small planets 

 travelling in independent orbits in vacuo. They 

 are consequently intensely cold. When they reach 

 our atmosphere they meet a resisting substance 

 which, although rarer than the vacuum obtained 

 by an air-pump, offers considerable resistance to their 

 passage. A high degree of friction is produced, and their 

 exterior portion becomes white hot, possibly some of it 

 being converted into vapour. This intense heating pro- 

 duces the light which we see. The external crust is 

 fused, and flows over the surface, and drops falling off 

 its posterior side go to swell the small luminous cloud 

 which follows. Owing to the unequal expansion, the 

 meteorite breaks, with the result that numerous frag- 

 ments are scattered. As it proceeds, these fragments 

 undergo the same process, and the whole mass is broken 

 into numerous irregular fragments, often as many as 

 5,000. The rate they travel has been estimated as from 

 2 to 16 miles per second. The noise of 'the explosion and 

 the closing of the air behind them are not heard until 

 they reach the earth. Sound travels at the rate of 11,000 

 feet per second, and a period elapses, varying from one 

 to six minutes, before the sound is heard. With regard 

 to the course they take, they do not descend perpen- 

 dicularly, but at a low incUnation to the horizon, making 

 a long path before they reach the earth. In one case the 

 course was as much as 120 miles, the visible part being 

 about sixty miles, the time occupied ten seconds, giving 

 a velocity of twelve miles per second. Their actual fall 



