REVIEWS — LAKES SUPERIOR AND HURON. 449 



metals, minerals, and some half-a-dozen fossils, given at page 5 of the 

 Beport, the genus Rippurites (or Hyppurites according to the or- 

 thography of the report) is enumerated. Now, although the true 

 zoological affinities of the extinct hippurite have yet, perhaps, to be 

 determined, the geological age of these characteristic fossils — re- 

 stricting them entirely to the Cretaceous epoch — is fixed beyond a 

 doubt. Heuce on the authority of this Beport, issued as it were 

 under the sanction of the Canadian Government, we may expect be- 

 fore long to find some foreign author quoting these rocks as occur- 

 ring amongst the formations of Lake Huron. 



"With reference to the Old and New Bed Sandstones mentioned 

 above, our author states : — " The snlphurets are found north and 

 north-east from the lake. I discovered in old Bed Sandstone, copper 

 in a native state. In coming clown Lake Huron [Superior], between 

 Batcheewauanong and G-oulais Bay, we find a new red sandstone and 

 variegated sandstone; I should not feel surprised, if on minute search 

 we should find coal in rear of G-ros Cap, above Sault Ste. Marie. I 

 discovered no evidence characteristic of the current of polarization ; 

 that is to say, of that current, which, passing through the centre of 

 the earth to the Zenith, ensures the existence of deep veins, and 

 I should be therefore slow to affirm that the veins of copper extend to 

 any great depth." We know not, for on that point the Beport is 

 dumb, how this last operation was effected ; neither, in our scientific 

 darkness, can we venture to guess at the nature of the process em- 

 ployed, unless the whole thing were done off-hand by the same kind 

 of intuitive perception which seems to have been so successfully con- 

 cerned in the determination of the sandstone ages. But seriously, 

 we ask, in a scientific report of 1856, can such things be ? And yet, 

 the curious current of polarization alluded to above, is quite a mode- 

 rate idea compared with some of the peculiar views enunciated in the 

 more purely theoretical portions of the Beport. In one place, for 

 example, we have the following original view of the origin of the 

 copper and other ores of the district in question : — 



" Copper ore and ores of all other descriptions are the results of 

 the decomposition of primitive rocks, but on Lake Superior the 

 copper, in its native state is due to the deposit of certain species of 

 organic matters which have a tendency to increase the electro-chemi- 

 cal action, and which decompose the sulphurets, oxides, &c, which 

 the abundant deposit of matter containing traces of talc serpentine 

 and chlo rites, has brought together or concentrated in a certain 

 limited space. For nearly all the rocks contain in the crystalline 

 cleavage, and also in the veins, these matters which appear some- 



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