36 
Geology, 
Unfortunately the series is extremely barren of fossils. The 
absence of these cannot be charged to any catastrophe which the 
series has undergone, for, while it is faulted in some places and 
gently tilted generally, it is not crumpled nor folded and shows 
no signs of destructive metamorphic changes. While it is by no 
means safe to assume the entire absence of fossils; while, indeed 
it is perhaps safer to assume their presence, they are very rare, or 
else circumscribed in their distribution within the region studied, 
for, though attention was chiefly absorbed by the glacial phe- 
nomena, it was incidentally necessary to traverse much territory 
occupied by the sedimentary rocks, and their exposure is so am- 
ple as to afford great facilities for observation. The vegetation 
is so scattered as to offer practically no concealment of the sur- 
face. The intense frost has split the surface beds into innumera- 
ble slabs which lie in the greatest profusion over the surface. At 
the same time there has been very little disintegration of rock into 
soil, or else it has been washed away, and hence almost no con- 
cealment from that source. While in some parts drift from the 
crystalline series interposes some concealment, the extent of this 
is limited. The importance of finding a sufficient number of fos- 
sils to identify the formations was fully realized, and a fairly 
constant outlook for them was maintained, but without result. 
All others who have visited the region have been, so far as I can 
learn, equally unsuccessful. There remain, however, grounds for 
hope that sufficient fossils will ultimately be found to determine 
the age or the ages of the series. The whole group has usually 
been referred, with doubt, to the Tertiary age, because of the 
presence of rocks of that age with a similar constitution in the 
Disco region. 
Igneous dykes traverse the series and the adjacent crystalline 
terranes. These are obviously later than the rocks traversed 
by them, but not necessarily later than all of the clastic series. 
Horizontal sheets of igneous rock were seen in a few cases, but 
whether they were intruded or outpoured on the surface was not 
determined. 
