No. 15. — Studies in the Gold-bearing Slates of Nova Seotia. 
By J. Edmund Woodman. 
With three plates. 
CONTENTS. 
PAGE 
General statement.375 
Structure and characteristics of portions of Halifax and Colchester 
counties.376 
Sediments.376 
Veins.379 
Structure.385 
Ores.390 
Eruptives.392 
Denudation.392 
History of the series . . .394 
Summary of early studies.398 
Problems for solution.401 
Literature.403 
General Statement. 
Along the Atlantic side of Nova Scotia a series of gold-bearing 
rocks extends from Cape Canso irregularly westward to Yarmouth, 
in a belt which averages from ten to forty miles in width. It 
covers an area estimated at somewhat over 6,000 square miles: but 
fully half must be deducted for the many intrusions of granitic 
rocks. The sediments consist of slate, sandstone, quartzite, clilo- 
ritic slate, and schist, always pyritiferous, and here and there a 
conglomerate. They have been profoundly metamorphosed, both 
by dynamic and igneous agencies. No fossils are known from 
them, and their exact age is in doubt. From the best fragments 
of evidence, however, they may be regarded as probably Algon- 
kian. Between and occasionally cutting the strata are veins of 
quartz and calcite containing gold, both free and in the various 
sulphides, which are abundant. The sediments themselves are 
impregnated with sulphides, gold being found at considerable dis¬ 
tances from veins. The whole mass, sediments and veins alike, 
has been thrown into east-west folds, and cross-folded and faulted 
north and south; and the crests of these folds have been denuded, 
fixing the location of the roughly elliptical mining areas. 
