LINE OF THE CANADIAN PACIFICO RAILWAY. ° 377 
are seen of grey Laurentian gneiss with red felspathic veins, and at 
Rat Portage itself is a faulted junction of the Huronian and Lau- 
rentian, described by Dr. G. M. Dawson, in his Report on the 49th 
Parallel, and to which the Falls of the Winnipeg river at that place 
are due. 
It has been remarked by previous observers that the Huronian 
of this district is somewhat different in mineral character from that 
of the typical district of Georgian Bay, and that it presents a more 
highly crystalline aspect and an appearance of conformability with 
-the Laurentian. These characters, which are very manifest in some 
of the railway-cuttings, suggest the possibility that it may be a lower 
member of the Huronian, partly filling the gap indicated by the great 
uuconformability of the Laurentian and Huronian on Lake Huron 
itself. Neither of these series has yet been brought into any direct 
stratigraphical connexion with the Norian or Upper Laurentian 
formation of Kastern Canada. 
It may be well to remark here, in connexion with this western 
extension of the old crystalline rocks of Canada, on the uniformity 
of mineral character which they present over 40 degrees of longi- 
tude, from Labrador to the Winnipeg river, and after a space of 27 
degrees further, in the mountains of British Columbia. Their 
similarity to the older Eozoic rocks of Brazil, Scotland, Scandi- 
navia, and Southern and Eastern Europe, is equally well marked ; 
and I have the pleasure of placing this evening on the table a 
collection of similar rocks from the neighbourhood of the first 
cataract of the Nile, so similar to the Laurentian of Canada that 
any geologist familiar with these rocks, and placed before the sec- 
tions of gneiss and micaceous and hornblende schist, traversed by 
veins of granite and syenite, which are exposed in the vicinity of 
Assouan, might be excused for imagining that he was examining 
one of the cuttings on the Canadian Pacific. At Assouan there is 
also an overlying unconformable series, consisting apparently largely 
of igneous products, and which may represent the Huronian of 
Canada. These rocks, with my notes of the sections of the Egyptian 
Laurentian, I propose to leave in the hands of Prof. Bonney, who 
has kindly consented to report on them to the Society at a future 
time *. 
Beyond Telford Station the old rocks disappear and are succeeded 
by muskeg or. swamp country, which here forms the border of the 
Great Red River plain. This vast swamp, 20 miles in width, and 
extending north and south for a great distance, with a depth of 
peaty matter stated at nine feet, affords a modern illustration of the 
formation of the beds of brown coal which occur in the Laramie and 
Cretaceous further west; and in the somewhat monotonous character 
* In the Collection of the society there is a suite of specimens from Assouan, 
presented by Mr. Hawkshaw, in which there are specimens from both of the 
crystalline formations above mentioned; but he does not seem to have distin- 
guished between these in his published paper, which is so valuable as a 
description of this interesting locality. See Quart. Journ. Geol. Soe. vol. xxiii. 
1867. 
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