May 24 , 1858 .] 
GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 
293 
with the American surveyors and soldiers in defining accuiately, and 
if possible by marked physical features, the boundary between the 
British possessions and those of the United States lying to the west 
of the tracts explored by Captain Palliser, and terminating in the 
Pacific to the south of Frazer River and Vancouver Island. 
As this last survey is accompanied by a clever young geologist, 
M. Bauerman, brought up under my direction, and who is specially 
versed in mineralogy, I look with great interest to his report of the 
structure of these hitherto slightly-explored regions, the mountains 
of which, whether the Cascade range near the coast or the great 
Rocky Mountains farther in the interior, are simply the prolonga- 
tions of the two chief chains of the western waterpartings of New 
Mexico, California, &c. 
The natural obstacles to the progress of such a party were, it was 
well known, the dense forests they must penetrate ; and to these I 
learn, whilst I write, is added the discovery, which might also have 
been well anticipated in the prolongation of the Californian ridges, 
of so much gold in the banks of the Frazer river # as already to 
have caused numerous emigrants to rush to these new diggings ; a 
course which I fear the working men of the American and British 
surveying parties may be too much disposed to follow. 
Canada. — Report of its Geological Survey . — The Geological Survey 
of Canada, under the direction of Sir William Logan, has issued 
elaborate Reports, in two volumes, for the years 1853-4-5 and 1856, 
copies of which have been presented to the Society. A great 
part of these Reports is necessarily taken up with geological sub- 
jects. The first by Sir William Logan gives an account of a 
large part of the Lawrentian formation, which runs from the coast 
of Labrador to Lake Superior, forming along a large part of its 
course an important mountain chain, chiefly formed of gneissic 
rocks, equivalent to the oldest gneiss of the north-west of Scotland 
and of the Scandinavian chain. Among these rocks, between Lake 
Huron and the River Saguenay, there are many bands of crystalline 
limestone. The gneiss proper yields but an indifferent soil, while 
that derived from the limestones is exceedingly fruitful ; the result 
being that in the gneissic district almost all the farms have been 
established on sinuous lines of limestone, which, now partly cleared, 
often penetrate far into the interior of the forest-covered Lawrentian 
chain. 
* See the Californian newspapers, & c. 
