O. M. Dawson — Geology of British Columhia. 219 



a Zaplirentis, a Diphiphjlliim, a Productus, and a Spirifer, and 

 pronounced the beds to be probably Carboniferous in age. 



Eocks belonging to the older series, uuconformably underlying 

 the Cretaceous, have now been examined in many additional 

 localities on Vancouver Island, and, while no palEeontological facts 

 have been obtained to prove that they are older than those of the 

 section above described, much circumstantial evidence has been 

 collected to show that rocks even much more highly crystalline than 

 those of the above section, and which, judged by standards locally 

 adopted in Eastern America, would be supposed to be of great 

 antiquity, represent approximately, at least, the same horizon. 



At the south-eastern extremity of the island, in the vicinity of 

 Victoria, a series of rocks occurs which was placed by Mr. Selwyn, 

 in his provisional classification of the rocks of British Columbia, 

 under the title of the Vancouver Island and Cascade. Crystalline 

 Series.^ Mr. Selwyn, in speaking of these, remarks on their 

 lithological similarity to the Huronian rocks, or those of the altered 

 Quebec group of Eastern Canada. A somewhat detailed examination 

 of this series has since been made, and shows it to be built up in great 

 part of dioritic and felspathic materials, which in places become 

 well characterized mica-schists, or even gneisses, while still else- 

 where distinctly maintaining the character of volcanic ash-beds and 

 agglomerates. With these are interbedded limestones, and occa- 

 sionally ordinary blackish argillites. No more certain palteonto- 

 logical evidence of the age of these beds than that afforded by 

 some large crinoidal columns which occur in the limestones, has yet 

 been obtained. These, however, suffice to shovv that they cannot be 

 referred to a pre-Silurian date, and it is highly probable that they 

 are actually a more altered portion of the series represented in the 

 first described section, from which their greatest point of difference 

 is found in the smaller proportionate importance of limestones. 

 They occur in the continuation of the same axis of elevation at no 

 very great distance, and the greater disturbance which they have 

 suffered would serve to account for the higher degree of alteration 

 in materials so susceptible of crystallization as those of volcanic 

 origin. 



Elsewhere, in the vicinity of Vancouver Island, rocks holding 

 fossils, which seem to be Carboniferous, and formed in part of volcanic 

 materials, occur ; and on Texada Island, beds probably of the same 

 age are found, consisting of interstratified limestone or marble, 

 magnetic iron ore, epidotic rock, diorite, and serpentine. 



Passing north-westward, along the same mountainous axis, to the 

 Queen Cliarlotte Islands, we find the rocks there underlying the 

 Cretaceous Coal series to present, in tlie main, features not dissimilar 

 to those of Vancouver Island. Massive limestones, generally fine- 

 grained, grey, and often cherty, are folded together with felspathic 

 and dioritic rocks, sometimes so much altered as to have lost the 

 evidence as to whether they were originally fragmental or molten. 



1 Eeport of Progress, Geol. Survey of Canada, 1871-2, p. 52. 



