CORRELATION AND CONCLUSIONS • 111 



in nature tiiat general lithological resemblances should be used sparingly. 

 They are unsafe, even within the Meguma series, and are really available 

 only where the gap or unknown area is short. The nearest of the correl- 

 ative series is many miles away; and without data now unobtainable, 

 such as exactly similar stratigraphic relations and fossil remains, the 

 Meguma should not at present be correlated, even roiighly, with any other 

 known series of rocks. 



Conclusions 



It is evident from Dawson's statement in 1878 that he had not for 

 many years, if ever, regarded the Meguma series as really Silurian. Pew 

 have done so at any time, according to the present understanding of the 

 limits of the Silurian, and in recent references among students of the 

 field the series has been labeled Lower Cambrian. What tangible evi- 

 dence there is upon which this opinion is based, it is difficult to discover. 

 A few doubtful markings in the rocks, a resemblance to certain other 

 rocks thought by the authors to be Cambrian, but in part of imknown 

 age, an indefinite position below the adjacent Silurian and Devonian — 

 these are the inadequate grounds for this Judgment. With the excep- 

 tion of a few American authors, writers appear merely to have followed 

 the lead of earlier ones, and no new evidence has been offered in support 

 of the opinion expressed. 



The conclusion here reached, from the evidence at present at hand, is 

 that the Meguma series is probably pre-Cambrian. All the data appear 

 to lead to this ; and while one or another of them is inconclusive by itself, 

 the evidence is cumulative and, along the line of structures and intru- 

 sions, measurably direct. Moreover, from the characteristics of the Ordo- 

 vician it appears probable that the main chapters in the structural his- 

 tory of the series — namely, the folding and doming and the forniation of 

 the interbedded veins — ^were enacted in the interval before the Ordo- 

 vician, and are thus at least as ancient as the Cambrian. 



Eeferbnces 



1898. L. W. Bailey : Report on the geology of southwest Nova Scotia, eni- 

 hracing counties of Queens, Shelburue, Yarmouth, Digby, and Annap- 

 olis. Geological Survey of Canada, new series, volume ix, Annual Re- 

 port for 189fi ; Report M, 154 pages. 



18(50. E. Billings: Review of Acadian geologj- and a supplementary chapter 

 thereto. Canadian Naturalist, volume v, pp. 450-455. 



1850. J. W. Dawson: On the metamorphlc and metalliferous rocks of eastern 

 Nova Scotia. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, 

 volume vi, pp. 347-.364. 



1855. Acadian geology. 



