REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR I913 "JJ 



The principal folding, of Devonic age, was extremely energetic. 

 The folds are often greatly squeezed with a general tendency to 

 leaning to overthrust toward the northwest. It is the push toward 

 Laurentia, as intimated long ago. This may have resulted in the 

 formation of veritable sheets which have gradually disappeared. 

 We have seen one indisputable overthrust, that of the Ordovicic of 

 Cap-des-Rosiers by the Lower Devonic of Cap-Bon-Ami and 

 Grande Greve, at the extreme point of Gaspesia. The surface of 

 displacement, unfortunately not very clear, dips here to the south- 

 east at an angle of about 30°. 



Very often the folds are straight and the beds vertical. Phe- 

 nomena of crushing and foliation have not seemed to me very 

 frequent or very intense. I have seen them, however, very beauti- 

 fully developed in the Bathurst iron mine south of the Bay Chaleur 

 — a foliated microgranite, having the aspect of gneiss and even the 

 appearance of glazed slates, gray or clear green, in a band of folded 

 Ordovicic. There are analogous compressions, and much more 

 abundant, in the azoic rocks of Nova Scotia, granites and diabases 

 on the east coast of the Bras d'Or, auriferous slates and granites 

 in the region of Halifax ; but these terranes are probably Pre- 

 cambric and their folding belongs to an epoch much more remote 

 than the Appalachian folding. 



The folds of Devonic age are, in a general sense, directed south- 

 west-northeast. They are the ones which, as I have above said, 

 determine the prolongation of Nova Scotia and the island of Cape 

 Breton; likewise those which determine the rias of this island and 

 those of Newfoundland. But the easternmost of these folds, those 

 that are close against the margin of Laurentia, bend downward, 

 beginning at St Anne-des-Monts, parallel to the coast of Gaspesia. 

 At Gaspe and Perce, they are oriented toward the southeast. It is 

 clear that this sinuosity is quite local and that the same folds, 

 concealed today at the bottom of the Gulf of St Lawrence, regain 

 soon between Anticosti and the Magdalen Islands, the northeast 

 direction. The Carbonic mantle of New Brunswick conceals 

 from view the same sinuous effects in the Devonic plications of 

 this province. It seems as though we had an analogous sinuosity, 

 but highly attenuated, on the east coast of the Bay of Fundy, on 

 the long fjord (Minas bay) and in the country which extends from 

 Truro to Arisaig. It will then be manifested by posthumous un- 

 dulations much more than by the almost invisible Devonic folds. 

 At any rate the sunken region of the ancient Devonic chain, which 

 has become the Gulf of St Lawrence, corresponds to an energetic 

 destruction of plication and it seems to me that under the waters of 

 the gulf all the folds of Gaspesia are squeezed and crushed along 

 the west coast of Newfoundland. This great Devonic chain, at 

 least 600 kilometers across, where widest, and even 400 kilometers on 

 the north of Newfoundland, doubtless continues well beyond that 

 to the northeast. But does it go, as Marcel Bertrand thought, 

 toward the south of England and toward Bretagne? I do not 

 think so, now that I have seen it. The Devonic chain of Canada 



