THE 
POAMERICAN GEOLOGIST. 
Vor. XXIX. JUNE, 1902. No. 6. 
THE HURONIAN QUESTION. 
By A. P. COLEMAN, Toronto. 
In the history of geology it has often occurred that work- 
ers who have approached some difficult problem from oppo- 
site directions in the field have entirely failed to agree when 
they met, partly because certain aspects of the problem at- 
tracted attention on the one side and others on the other, and 
partly because of a confusion of terms, a given name being 
employed in different senses by the two parties. 
The best example of such a controversy in America is to 
be found in the treatment of the relationship and nomencla- 
ture of the Pre-Cambrian rocks around lake Superior by the 
geologists who began the study of these difficult formations 
on the north shore, and those who later took up the work on 
the south shore. 
The seemingly interminable dispute appears at last to be 
entering on a more hopeful stage when the two sides are ap- 
proaching an agreement regarding the facts of the field rela- 
tionships, though differing in the names to be applied to the 
different formations. The subject has been revived by the 
appearance of professor Van Hise’s interesting and important 
work on the “Iron Ore Deposits of the Lake Superior Region,” 
*in which he revises some of his previous opinions and at last 
admits that sedimentary rocks belonging to the iron range 
occur in the Archean, and that the gneisses and granites 
generally called Laurentian in Canada, have an eruptive 
relationship. to them. His recognition of this fact is due to 
his study of the iron ranges of the Vermilion and Michipicoten 
districts north of lake Superior, and it is satisfactory to find 
* U. S. Geol. Soc., 21st Ann. Rep., part 3. 
