﻿486 Canadian Record of Science. 



crystalline members of the whole series of formations 

 was regarded as more recent than much of the fossilifer- 

 ous portion. About the year 1870, however, Dr. T. S. 

 Hunt, then on the staff of the Canadian Survey, advanced 

 tlie theory that these crystalline rocks were older than 

 the fossiliferous strata and that they were probably 

 referable to the Huronian system. This view was 

 gradually adopted, and has since been proved to be 

 correct, since these rocks undoubtedly underlie the 

 lowest Cambrian. The use of the term " Quebec 

 Group," therefore, which was adopted to include all 

 these divisions, under the supposition that they all 

 represented fossiliferous sediments, is now misleading, 

 and if employed should be confined to the peculiar 

 series of fossiliferous limestones, slates, conglomerates, 

 etc., which are well recognized. As, however, all these 

 have now been studied and assigned to their proper 

 position in the geological scale, the use of the term, except 

 in the way of reference, may now be discontinued. 



The first paper in which these rocks are discussed in 

 their development about the city of Quebec is found in 

 the Transactions of the Geological Society of London, 

 December, 1827, by Dr. J. Bigsby ; who in the earlier 

 years of the century did a very considerable amount of 

 geological exploration in various parts of the Canadian 

 field, both on the fossiliferous and the crystalline rocks. 

 The slate, conglomerate and limestone series about Quebec 

 city" was described and the presence of the contained 

 fossils recognized ; but from the existence of small 

 deposits of carbonaceous matter, which are found in 

 some of the strata around Levis and in the vicinity, in 

 the slaty rocks, and which apparently belong to the 

 variety of coaly matter now called Anthraxolite, Bigsby 

 considered that the rocks of this series might represent or 

 be the equivalents of the Carboniferous limestone of the 

 English geologists. 



