218 Tlie American Geologist. April, i890 
In 1862 Thomas Macfarlane, Avho was familiar with the crys- 
talline schists of Norwa,y, which there underlie the Cambrian, 
compared them with those of the Green Mountain range and of 
the great lakes already noticed, and concluded that they are all 
essentially similar, lithologicalh^ Bigsby, the earliest scientific 
observer of these rocks in the Northwest,moreover announced in- 
dependently, in 1863, their apparent identity with the crystal- 
line schists of Scandinavia. In the Geology of Cmiada 1863, 
I called attention (p. 705) to these resemblances, mentioning 
that the crystalline schists of the north shore of lake Super- 
ior "recall the strata of the [altered] Quebec group." 
The whole question of their probable identity, and of the 
great antiquity of these crystalline schists of the Green Moun- 
tain range as evinced by the pebbles and fragments found at 
different localities in the uncrystalline lower paleozoic sedi- 
ments was at that time repeatedly discussed with Logan, but, 
as I have elsewhere said, '"official reasons then and for some 
years afterward prevented the writer from expressing any dis- 
sent from the views of the director of the geological survey of 
Canada." It was not until after having spent some months in 
1869 and 1870, in geologicarstudies along the southern coast 
of New Brunswick, and made examinations at various points 
on the coasts of Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, that I 
ventured to declare in October 1870,in a communication to the 
Boston Society of Natural History, (Proceedings XIV, 45; 
46,) entitled "Notes on the Geology of the vicinity of Boston," 
that the crystalline schists (previously described as altered 
Devonian), Avhich near St. John, New Brunswick, underlie 
unconformably the Cambrian sediments, belong to the same 
series as those underlying such sediments near Boston ; classing 
them moreover with similar crystalline rocks at Newport, 
Rhode Island, and on the coast of Maine. It was then said "to 
the same series I refer the great range of gneissic and dioritic 
rocks with serpentines, chloritic, talcose and epidotic schists 
which stretches through western New England," that is to say, 
the Green Mountain range. In a farther notice of this series of 
rocks in February, 1871, it was added, "they apparentl}^ belong 
* * * to the great Huronian system," (Amer. Journ. Science 
III., 1, 84). See also Azoic Rocks, being Report E., second geo- 
logical survey of Pennsylvania, page 114. Having reached 
this point, the attention of Logan was once again invited, and 
