38 



St. Lawrence, the Island of Orleans, and a considerable portion of the 

 north bank of the river, including the ridge upon which Quebec is 

 placed. In that neighbourhood the mass of the deposit consists of a 

 black and brown slaty limestone, inclined at very high angles, and 

 alternating with semi-crystalline limestone, and various conglomerates. 

 The limestone contains several varieties of crystallized carbonate of 

 lime, intermixed with quartz crystals, and occasionally traversed by 

 seams of bituminous matter. Near Cape-Rouge, and on the plains 

 of Abraham and Kilgraston, some of the strata consist of red and 

 greenish clay-slate. In the calcareous conglomerates, organic re- 

 mains are mixed with fragments of clay-slate ; and the beds alternate 

 with compact gray limestone and quartzose layers. Between Que- 

 bec and Cape-Rouge, boulders of primary rocks, and fragments of 

 compact grauwacke, are buried deep in the red schist. 



The channels of the various streams east and west of Quebec, afford 

 instructive sections, which, according to the author, prove these slaty 

 deposits to be more recent than the conchiferous limestone. 



On the south side of the river St. Lawrence, the slaty limestone of 

 Quebec is no longer seen ; but several new beds of conglomerate pre- 

 sent themselves, one of the lowest of which contains trilobites, en- 

 crinites, corallines, and other fossils, — associated with vegetable im- 

 pressions, probably of fuci and amansiee. In the schistose beds near 

 the mouth of the Etchemin are thin seams of coal ; and at the village 

 of St. Henry the slate is so compact as to be used for hones. 



2. The horizontal conchiferous limestone occupies a zone from 

 two to three miles in breadth, on the north of the slaty tract, and 

 included between the slate and a mountainous range of gneiss. It is 

 exposed in the bed's of all the rivers which flow southwards into the 

 St. Lawrence, and its characters are well developed at the falls of 

 the Montmorenci and the St. Charles, and at the quarries of Beaufort. 

 The organic remains consist of several species of trilobite, orthocera, 

 terebratula, encrinite, ammonite, &c. On the Montmorenci the beds 

 are nearly horizontal, from eighteen inches to two feet in thickness, 

 and of a blackish -brown colour ; in one situation they pass into a 

 subjacent calcareous conglomerate, whilst in other places the lime- 

 stone itself contains large blue nodules, and reposes immediately 

 upon gneiss. At Beaufort-quarries, ledges of fetid limestone alter- 

 nate with calcareo-bituminous shale, containing organic remains 

 similar to those noticed on the Montmorenci. 



From the characters and fossils of the limestone above described, 

 the author regards it as the same with the calcaire intermediaire of 

 D'Aubuisson, — and the equivalent of the " Carboniferous-limestone" 

 of English geologists. 



Dec. 21. — Henry Holland Stutzer, Esq. River-Terrace, Islington, 

 was elected a Fellow of the Society. 



The reading was begun of a paper " On a Group of Slate-Rocks 

 in Yorkshire, between the Rivers Lune and Wharfe, from near Kirby 

 Lonsdale to near Malham,"— by John Phillips, Esq. Hon. Mem. of the 

 Yorkshire Leeds and Hull Philosophical Societies. 



