JUNE 20, 1884.] 
‘pierce the glass when the knobs are about one 
inch apart. H. W. Eaton. 
GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY OF 
NORTHERN CANADA.) 
By northern Canada, the author meant the 
whole of the Dominion northward of the 
organized provinces and districts, as far as 
known. His information was derived from 
his own observations around Hudson’s Bay 
and in the North-west territories, and from the 
reports and maps of the scientific men who 
had accompanied the various arctic expeditions 
by land and sea. Specimens and interesting 
notes on the geology of Great Slave Lake had 
been received from Capt. H. P. Dawson, R.A., 
who had spent last year there, in charge of 
the Canadian station of the circumpolar com- 
mission. The distribution of the various for- 
mations, from the oldest to the newest, was 
illustrated by a large, geologically colored map 
of the whole Dominion. Referring to the 
Laurentian system, Professor Bell showed 
that it forms the surface-rock over an enor- 
mous circular area on the main continent, and 
that the central part of it is occupied by 
Hudson’s Bay, with a border of paleozoic 
rocks around it. Laurentian rocks are large- 
ly developed in Greenland, and along the At- 
lantic coast from Newfoundland to Georgia. 
Taken together, the general outline of the 
Laurentian areas of North America has a form 
corresponding with that of the whole conti- 
nent, which has been built around these ancient 
rocks. The Huronian strata which constitute 
the principal metalliferous series in Canada 
were closely associated with the Laurentian, 
and appeared to be always conformable with 
them. The largest and best-known areas were 
between Lake Huron and James’s Bay; but 
Dr. Bell had found four belts of them on the 
east coast of Hudson’s Bay, and others had 
been recognized in the primitive region to the 
west of it. Indeed, wherever the older crys- 
talline rocks had been explored in Canada, 
belts or basins having the character of the Hu- 
ronian series had been met with. Limestones, 
slates, and quartzites, interstratified with amyg- 
daloids, basalts, etc., corresponding with the 
Nipigon formation of Lakes Superior and Nip- 
igon, were largely developed on the Eastmain 
coast and adjacent islands of Hudson’s Bay, 
and apparently, also, on the Coppermine River, 
1 Abstract of a paper on the geology and economic minerals 
of Hudson’s Bay and northern Canada, read to the Royal society 
of Canada, May 23, by Dr. Ropert BELL. 
SCIENCE. 
7)9 
and to the westward of it. Buta set of hard 
red siliceous conglomerates and sandstones 
were seen to come between the Huronian and 
the Nipigon series at Richmond Gulf on the 
Eastmain coast, which appeared to be uncon- 
formable to both. Mr. Cochrane and Dr. Bell 
had found similar rocks on Athabasca Lake; 
Capt. Dawson, on Great Slave Lake; and Sir 
John Richardson, to the north-east of Great 
Bear Lake. The conglomerates, slates, and 
gray argillaceous quartzites of Churchill, and 
the white fine-grained quartzite of Marble 
Island, were probably of this horizon. Siluri- 
an rocks were well known to be widely spread 
on some of the largest of the arctic islands, 
and along the most northern channels of the 
Polar Sea. They formed an irregular and 
interrupted border on the western sides of 
Hudson’s and James’s Bays. A large basin 
of Devonian strata containing gypsum and 
clay-ironstone extended south-westward from 
James’s Bay. West of the great Laurentian 
area, Devonian rocks could be traced here and 
there, all the way from Minnesota to the mouth 
of the Mackenzie River. ‘They were not, how- 
ever, so widely distributed as had been sup- 
posed by the older travellers who had passed 
rapidly through the country in the early part 
of the century, when the whole subject of 
American geology was in its infancy. The 
so-called bituminous shales of Sir John Rich- 
ardson and others, which are so prevalent 
along the Athabasca and Mackenzie Rivers, 
were found by Professor Bell to consist of soft 
cretaceous strata, which had been saturated and 
blackened by the petroleum rising out of the 
underlying Devonian rocks, which here, as in 
Ontario, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, are rich in 
this substance. The principal features and 
the geographical distribution of the carbonif- 
erous, liassic, cretaceous, and tertiary rocks 
of the northern regions were successively de- 
scribed. Among other points of interest in 
reference to the post-tertiary period, Dr. Bell 
mentioned that the remains of both the mas- 
todon and the mammoth had been found on 
Hudson’s Bay, and that elephants’ tusks were 
reported to occur on an island in its northern 
part. Isolated discoveries of elephantine re- 
mains had been made in the North-west terri- 
tories, and several on the Rat River, a tributary 
of the Yukon, near the borders of Alaska. 
In referring to the economic minerals, Pro- 
fessor Bell said that even the coarser ones, 
such as granite, limestone, cement-stone, slate, 
flagstone, gypsum, clays, marls, ochres, sand 
for glass-making, etc., would yet have their 
value in different parts of the great region 
