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The Utica Terrane in Canada. 173 
are usually too thin or nodular and easily disintegrating to 
be of any commercial value. 
Some bands, however, are magnesian and calcareous 
and break with a conchoidal fracture. These might very 
reasonably prove to be useful for cement or hydraulic 
purposes. 
The bituminous character of the shales of this terrane 
induced a company to start operations at the village of 
Windsor, near Collingwood, Ont., for the purpose of ex- 
tracting oil (petroleum) from these shales, but the process 
proved too costly and the work was abandoned. The 
shales used are reported to have contained an average of 8 
per cent. of petroleum. The specimens collected by Mr. 
A.S. Cochrane, C.E., at the works, showed the shales to be 
highly fossiliferous. 
The basal beds of the Utica have been described as 
consisting of interstratified bands of limestones and shales 
which gradually pass upward into shales exclusively as the 
middle portion of the terrane is reached. These middle 
beds consist for the most part of shales, dark-brown 
weathering and black along a fresh fracture, which become 
more or less compact in certain places, whilst many beds 
have a decided conchoidal fracture. They are rich in 
graptolites and trilobites, especially of the genera Lepto 
graptus and Triarthrus respectively. The uppermost beds 
of the Utica, so far as they are known to the writer, show 
a strong tendency to become argillaceous and magnesian, 
especially in the Ottawa Paleozoic Basin. They consist of 
very thin and fissile, soft argillaceous shales, evenly bedded 
and rather destitute of fossils. They pass upward into the 
Hudson shales and strata whose lower measures are highly 
magnesian, as can be seen from the bright buff weathering 
character of the Hudson River rocks along the line of the 
Canada Atlantic Railway, near Ottawa and elsewhere. 
The total thickness of the three subdivisions of the Utica, 
thus differentiated on lithological as well as other grounds, 
has nowhere been seen by the writer to exceed one hun- 
dred feet, but is usually much less. 
