364 The American Geologist. June, 1904. 
NOMENCLATURE OF THE QOLD-BEARING MET- 
AMORPHIC SERIES OF NOVA SCOTIA.* 
By J. Edmund Woodman, Halifax, N. S. 
CONTENTS. 
Location and extent 364 
Boumlaries.... 365 
The series as a nnit 365 
Chief structural features 366 
Names previously applied to series and subdivisions 367 
Proposed nomenclature... 368 
Keferences 369 
Location and extent.- — The rocks frequently given the above 
name occupy most of the southern part of the peninsula of 
Nova Scotia. They are largely composed, as stated many times 
in papers from 1828 to the present, of alternating slates and 
■ quartzytes, with many bodies of intrusives, chiefly acid and 
abyssal. Their present distribution, is in the form of a wedge, 
wide in the west and narrowing steadily eastward. The area 
of this wedge has been variously estimated at from 6000 to 
8500 square miles, including islands off the coast but without 
deducting lakes. A fair estimate is about 8000. As fully 3500 
square miles are occupied by intrusives, only 4500 remain as 
the surface area of the stratified rocks. 
We lack full knowledge of the area of stratified material 
in those parts of the territory mapped heretofore in general as 
intrusive, but it cannot be great. In the east, the granites south 
of Chedabucto bay contain patches aggregating at most a few 
square miles ; and in the west, small areas of gold-bearing rocks 
have been noted in the vicinity of New Ross, in the middle of 
the great western massif. The total amount of all the included 
sediments cannot, however, add much to^ the area of the series. 
The length of the series is that of the whole mainland por- 
tion of the province ; for it extends from cape Canso and Park 
ledge on the east tO' Bear cove and cape St. Mary on the west, 
a distance of approximately 280 miles, chiefly on the strike of 
the strata. Its width at the eastern end, including the granites, 
is eight miles. Its greatest width across the strike is along a 
line southeast from the head of St. Mary's bay, in the western 
half, and measures approximately 75 miles. 
* The first of a series of papers extracted and altered from part of a thesis 
accepted at Harvard University for the Doctorate of Science in 1902, entitled 
"Geology of the Moose River district, Halifax county. Nova Scotia; together 
with the pre-Carboniferous history of the Meguma scries." 
