GEOLOGICAL ^'^OTES IN THE GREAT EXHIBITION. 
383 
Portneuf — a distance of more tlian a Limdred miles. In tliis area the ore 
seems to be concentrated in the neighbourhood of the St. Maurice and 
Batescan rivers ; and iron has been smelted in the neighbourhood of these 
three rivers for upwards of a century. The ore with which the Hadnor 
furnaces are supplied is derived from the seignories of Cap de la Made- 
laine and Champlain, where it occurs close to the surface in a multitude of 
patches of from 3 to 24 inches in thickness. It is brought to the furnaces 
partly by the workmen of the Forge Company and partly by the various 
farmers on \^'hose lands the ore occurs. The ore is washed at the smelting- 
works to free it from soil, and it then contains from 40 to 50 per cent, 
of iron. Other specimens of bog ore are exhibited, from Yaudreuil, where 
the bed is from 4 to 8 feet thick, and there lies beneath it in some parts a 
thin stratum of blue phosphate of iron. At St. Vallier in Bellechasse 
there is an interrupted bed of from 12 to 20 miles thick and over 10 or 
15 square miles, near the junction of the two brandies of the Eiviere du 
Of red hematite, or oligist ore, there is a fine sample from an unworked 
bed of 30 feet thick, resting upon crystalline Laurentian limestone, and 
limited at top by the magnesian limestone of the calciferous group. Ana- 
lysis gives 58 per cent, of iron. 
Of magnetic ore there are highly interesting samples. From Sutton we 
have it from a bed 12 feet thick, consisting of dolomite abounding in 
small crystals of the magnetic oxide of iron. From the " big iron-ore 
bed of Marmora," which is not however a single bed, but a succession — 
over 100 feet thick— interstratified between gneiss or crystalline limestone. 
From Hadborough and Crosley, from a bed 200 feet thick in gneiss ; 
samples of numerous other beds in Laurentian gneiss are also displa^-ed ; 
and there is a specimen of ilmenite with rutile from St. Urbain, Bay of 
St. Paul. The latter bed is 90 feet thick, and interstratified in anorthorite 
rock, also of Laurentian age. Samples of lead ores are shown from the 
Lower Helderberg group, Quebec group, Calciferous formation, and the 
Laurentian rocks — in the latter case cutting crystalline limestone ; — of 
copper from Laurentian gneiss, and from the well-known Bruce Mines, 
where a group of lodes intersect a thick mass of greenstone trap in the 
Huronian formation ; from Acton, in dolomite, at the base of the Quebec 
group ; and from many other mines in that formation : native from a lode 
in St. Iguace Island, Lake Superior, where the vein cuts a thick mass of 
amygdaloidal diorite conformable with the strata, — the vein is about 
5 inches thick, and many of the masses of native copper weigh upwards of 
100 lbs., accompanied by native silver, in a gangue of calcspar. Copper- 
ore is shown from other places, all in the Quebec group ; amongst them 
Mamainse, on Lake Superior, from whence is 450 lbs. in a single sheet 
from a vein. The promontory of Mamainse consists of various layers 
of coarse conglomerate and of amygdaloidal greenstone, in one of 
the bands of the latter bay intersected by a narrow fissure running 
N. and S., nearly in the strike of the beds ; its greatest width is 
6 inches, and in some places it is found to be nearly filled with native 
copper ; other veins intersect the same rock. In ancient shallow holes 
sunk at intervals along the course of some of these veins of metallic copper 
there are occasionally found the remains of Indian hammers, consisting 
of small boulders usually of trap, having shallow grooves worked round 
them to receive the withes or thongs attaching the handles — evidence of 
the rude aboriginal attempts at mining many centuries since. From the 
Quebec group we have also sulphuret of nickel (Millerite) and native 
silver. 
