278 Correspondence. 
portions of the Archtean. I have not receded in any way from the 
position which I took and which is defined, so far as this discussion is 
concerned, in the proposition I have quoted ; and if Prof. W. finds we 
tend toward agreement I am very glad of it. 
4. Prof. W. again misrepresents me when he asserts that I say " it 
is very important for geologists to arrest its action before the softened 
state of the original sediments is reached." I simply stated that 
" The sooner the well defined line which exists in nature between 
rock metamorphism and fusion is recognized by geologists, and the 
former understood to stop where the latter begins, the better for the 
progress of investigation in Archaean geology." 
5. I find myself for the most part quite in accord with those British 
investio'ators whom Prof. W. so gratuitously advised me to consult, 
particularly with those who regard the granites and gneisses as the 
result of fusion of overlying rocks. I do not, however, agree with 
them in regarding the gneisses as an intermediate state. It seems to 
me from what I have seen that the granite is the first stage, gneiss 
the second; that the gneiss of our Laurentian areas is a differentiated 
granite, the differentiation being due to motion in the cooling and 
crystallizing magma. It is to be borne in mind of course that there 
are many feldspathic mica schists in the upper Archaean commonly 
called gneisses, which are truly metamorphic, but for which, owing to 
the poverty of our nomenclature, we have no good name. Nor can I 
of course agree with some of them in regarding " fusion " and "meta- 
morphism " as synonymous terms. 
6. With regard to "conglomerates in gneissic terranes " referred 
to by Prof. W. in the last paragraph of his rejoinder I would only say, 
that pebble and boulder conglomerates are no novelty in the upper, 
schistose or metamorphic division of the Archsean ; and the numerous 
inclusions in the granites and granitoid gneiss such as the ' ' Basswood 
granite " and the "Saganaga granite " with both of which I am some- 
what familiar, are, in my opinion, certainly not conglomerates in any 
accepted sense of the word. It seems to me to be introducing confusion 
of the most lamentable sort into the science to call such appearances 
conglomerates. I have studied the phenomenon for some years over a 
wide extent of Archaean country and find the inclusions most abund- 
ant near the shattered edges of belts of upper Archaean rocks, where 
there is the most conclusive evidence that they are simply detached 
fragments from the brittle, unfused rocks in contact with the granite 
magma. Evidence of this will be advanced in a forthcoming report on 
the geology of the Rainy Lake region. Frequently these inclusions 
are much altered by the conditions to which they have been subjected 
and are rounded. For the most part, however, they are more or less 
angular or lenticular in shape. Some few of these inclusions appear 
not to be foreign to the granite or gneiss, but to be more basic earlier 
secretions of the magma from which the granite crystallized. I 
hasten to give expression to these views that Prof. W. may perhaps 
