Secondary Occurrenceii of 3f((cinetHe. — Ki'mbal/. 17 
traversed by a belt of later syenite. Crossing the island, this 
spreads out in a crescent between the south and north shores. 
Between the syenitic mass and the Vancouver series stretch- 
es a narrow belt of raetamorphic limestone forming in places 
the disrupted base of Ihe series. The Vancouver member ad- 
jacent to the marble is apparently the weathered product of a 
basic aggregate — graduating into diabase and diorite all ex- 
cessively epidotic from alteration of pyroxene and amphibole. 
This material is designated by the Canadian geologists as dio- 
rite, a generic identification, which will be adopted in the 
present paper for want of specific microscopic determination. 
This is more or less stratiform and differentiated in color ac- 
cording to degree of alteration. Epidote is the most conspic- 
uous constitueqit, especially in close relation with develop- 
ments of magnetic iron ore. 
The intercalation of metamorphic limestone with eruptives, 
as remarked by Dr. Dawson, indicates the close relationship 
in time of tlie two classes of rock, which even apart from the 
•facts afforded by similar associati-on elsewhere, renders it nec- 
essary for the present to regard the whole as forming one great 
series, otherwise largely made up, it is believed, of highly met- 
amorphosed sediments whicli have passed through a semi-fus- 
ion. The limestone however seems t>o occupy the relation to 
the Vancouver series of a basal formation overflowed by suc- 
cessive emissions of eruptive material by which it is some- 
times interpenetrated, lifted yiid disrupted. The syenite bears 
evidence of subsefjuent upheaval, referred in point of time to 
a period later than the Cretaceous when strata assigned to 
the coal-bearing series of the Comox basin were deposited near 
Gillies bay. 
Occurrences of nuignetic iron ore of each kind of epigen 
esis which I have observed on the islands of British Columbia, 
as above instanced, are singularly uniform in character and 
in topographic as well as in petrographic environment. Apart 
from magnitude and conditions of erosion differences between 
them are mainly in their relations to a uniformly rugged sur- 
face; that is, as to their development on the flank or on the 
end of a slope. On the flank or near the surface of a slope, like 
three out of four of the separate ore bodies discovered on the 
south side of Texada, such occurrences are commonly well 
