NORTHEAST-SOUTHWEST SERIES 493 



" The general dip of the rocks along the eastern border of the bay of Fundy is 

 northwest at an angle of about 15 degrees. On the New Brunswick shore there are 

 several isolated areas belonging to the same system which dip southeastward at angles 

 varying from 25 to 35 degrees. These inclinations have led to the conclusion that the 

 Acadian area has a synclinal structure. That such is the case, however, can not 

 be accepted as a final conclusion, for the reason that a faulting or tilting of the 

 strata would account equally well for the observed dips. In the eastern part of 

 the Acadian area, about the Minas basin and Cobequid bay, the strata are much 

 disturbed and dip toward all points of the compass, and are at all angles from near 

 horizontality up to nearly 50 degrees or more. Some faults have been recognized in 

 this region, but a characteristic fault structure, although indicated, has not been 

 demonstrated." 



Saint Lawrence Zing.— Another line of this northeast series is that great 

 lineament (F) which follows the course of the Saint Lawrence river from 

 lake Ontario to near its mouth (a distance of over 400 miles), and is 

 continued southwestward beyond the border of the map as the western 

 border of the Alleghany plateaus, as mapped by Powell. Along the 

 Saint Lawrence for a part of the way this line is the course of the great 

 " Saint Lawrence-Champlain " fault, as mapped by the Geological 

 Survey of Canada. 



The series of lineaments which have been above described mark off 

 in a quite accurate manner the physiographic regions of the Atlantic 

 border. It has also been noted that, to a considerable extent, the lines 

 correspond to formation boundaries (especially, however, I and H). 

 Topographically they mark off also a series of plateaus increasing regu- 

 larly in height, after the manner of a flight of stairs, as one passes inland 

 from the seacoast. In this series are, beginning at the shoreline, the 

 Atlantic plain (I-J to the south), the Piedmont plateau (H-I), and the 

 Appalachian ranges (from H west to the Cumberland plateau). From 

 the elevated region reached in the Appalachian ranges the country is 

 " stepped off " by plateaus descending in the opposite direction — the 

 Alleghany or Cumberland plateaus and the central plains of the upper 

 Mississippi valley. 



As bearing on the relation of the Saint Lawrence line and the north- 

 ern fall line to the eastern shore of the Atlantic, a suggestion by Pro- 

 fessor Suess* is interesting : 



"This series of surmises leads to the conclusion that under the north Atlantic 

 there is on the north a broad Archean region and south of the same a curved 

 chain folded toward the north, in which the Upper Carboniferous rests in dis- 

 cordance on older eroded folds. 



"4. It is a very remarkable fact that the east coast of North America actually 

 corresponds to these surmises. There appear here, in fact, with the exception of 



*Sitzungsber. d. k. k. Akad. d. Wissensch. in Wien, vol. cvii, Abth. [, 1898. Translation by- 

 Emerson iu Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., vol. 11, 1900, p. 102. 



