Coal in Canada. 219 



very old rocks. They cannot do this merely on the assertion 

 of an unknown person, against whose statements all the facts, even 

 those said to be ascertained by his own borings, militate. 



Farther, in the transference of materials over the surface, in the 

 so called drift period, fragments of coal derived from distant coal- 

 fields may have been mixed with the superficial tertiary deposits. 

 In coal districts it is not uncommon thus to find loose coal in 

 places where it does not occur in situ. Various circumstances 

 make such an occurrence unlikely in the drift of Canada; and as 

 it must be very limited and exceptional, and could not a priori 

 be anticipated, the discovery of such drift-coal in a deep bore-hole 

 is in the highest degree improbable. 



Lastly, it is not uncommon to find in the tertiary superficial beds 

 themselves, consolidated peat and imperfect coal {brown coal), 

 a substance which exists largely in such deposits in the West and 

 North of America. Such material though not likely to occur in 

 workable quantity, might be of some economic importance. The 

 Bowmanville mineral is however evidently not of this kind. 



These exceptional cases taken together, give scarcely a shadow 

 of a hope of coal in Canada, and none of them applies to the Bow- 

 manville case, as it stands at present. We must therefore in the 

 meantime regard this case as beyond the pale of ordinary geolo- 

 gical facts, and as either a fraud, a mistake, or a singularly ex- 

 ceptional occurrence only to be explained by further explorations 

 of the locality. 



With respect to the mineral itself, it would seem that specimens 

 sent to Prof. Chapman had the aspect of compact bitumen, but 

 other specimens sent to the same geologist and to this city, are 

 true coal, having the aspect, properties and structure of rich bitu- 

 minous coal of the true coal formation. The writer has submitted 

 small fragments — prepared in a manner which he has applied to 

 numerous specimens of coal from other localities — to microscopic 

 examination, and finds that they afford three distinct kinds of 

 vege'able structure, all found in ordinary coal, and one of them 

 the scalariform tissue characteristic of sigillariaa and ferns. The 

 substance is therefore true coal, formed from the remains of land 

 plants, and not distinguishable from that of the carboniferous 

 system.* 



* To prevent farther mistake, it is necessary to add that, since this 

 article went to press, the writer has seen some additional specimens said 

 to he from Bowmanville, some of which are not coal, but appear to he 

 charred wood saturated with some bituminous substance. 



