stated, contained 52.0 per cent. of magnetic grains. These were analyzed separately (II), while the non magnetic portion gave me the results under III. Sulphur and phosphorus are present in this sand in very small quantities, the determinations of Mr. Broome giving for the washed mixed ore 0.70 per cent. of sulphur and .007 of phosphorus.

The sum of the analysis II, if the iron be calculated as magnetic oxyd, is 100.08. The composition of the mixed ore, if we suppose II and III to be mixed in equal proportions, would be as under 1A, which agrees closely with the analysis I, given above.

Bersimis. The iron sand of Bersimis, as already described, contained but 34.7 per cent. of magnetic grains; the analysis of this portion is given under IV.

The sum of the analysis, if the iron be calculated as magnetic oxyd, is 99.67. The non-magnetic portion of the Berismis sand was dissolved in hydrochloric acid, out of contact with oxygen, and the amounts of protoxyd and peroxyd of iron were separately determined. The analysis gave me as follows:

Mingan. The iron sand from the south of the St. John river, at Mingan, contained 48.3 per cent. of magnetic grains, whose analysis is given under VI, while that of the non-magnetic portion of the ore is found under VII.

The sum of the analysis VI, if the iron be estimated as mag

netic oxyd, is 99.59.

In the above analyses of the iron sands it will be remarked that the magnetic portion retains a little adherent silicious matter, and small amounts of titanium, both of which vary in the sands from different localities, although the separation by means of the magnet was in all cases effected with the same precautions. Observations and experiments on other samples of these sands go to show that different layers from the same locality vary, not only in the proportion of silicious sands, but in the relative proportions of magnetic and titanic ores and of garnet. This might be expected when we consider that the differences in density between each of these constituents of the sand, should, under the influence of moving water, lead to their partial separation from each other.

A specimen of iron sand from Quogue, on the south side of Long Island, near New York, where these sands are about to be employed for the manufacture of steel, closely resembled those of

Bersimis, and contained 31 per cent. of magnetic grains. The unpurified ore, which was mingled with a considerable amount of quartz sand, and some garnet, amounting together to about 17 per cent., gave by analysis about 40 per cent. of iron, and 15 per cent. of titanium, besides a proportion of manganese greater than the iron sands from the lower St. Lawrence."

We have not space to make extracts from the other reports, which are chiefly filled with local details of great value as contributions to the Geology of Canada, but affording few points of popular interest.

If any fault can be found with this Report, it is in the small amount of Palæontology which it contains; but this, it may be supposed, is to appear in the separate reports or decades of the Palæontologist of the Survey. The present Report, it will be observed, belongs to what may be called the transition period of the Survey the work done having been in great part under the directorship of Sir William Logan, but the issue of the Report being under that of Mr. Selwyn; who will, no doubt, in the large field now presented by the Dominion, prosecute the great work of the Survey with renewed energy and success, and render it even more creditable, if possible, to Canadian science.

J. W. D.

ON THE SURFACE GEOLOGY OF NEW BRUNSWICK. BY G. F. MATTHEW, Esq.

(Read before the Natural History Society of New Brunswick, April, 1871.)

PART I.-THE GLACIAL EPOCH.

At the end of Prof. L. W. Bailey's Report on the Geology of the Southern part of New Brunswick (Fredericton, 1865,), will be found a few pages giving a very brief outline of its superficial geology. I now propose to consider the subject at greater length, and to record such observations as have been made in this region since the date of that report.

The Unmodified Drift being the most widely distributed of the superficial deposits in this Province, and that from which the materials of the later ones have been derived, a description of it

and of the related phenomena of striation, will naturally form the subject of this paper.

Of the Triassic period some few monuments still remain in Southern New Brunswick. Scattered patches of red sandstone, resting unconformably upon the Coal Measures in the eastern part of Saint John County bear witness to the former existence of an extensive basin of these rocks, which once occupied the Bay of Fundy depression and extended eastward into the area occupied by the waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. These soft red rocks are monuments also of the enormous amount of denudation which the region underwent in subsequent ages; for it is only where they have been protected by ridges of hard metamorphic strata, or by the capping of basalt with which they are covered at a number of places, that any vestiges of these soft sandstones remain, around the Bay above named. Between the epoch of the Trias and the glacial period long ages elapsed which, except in the wearing away of the older formations, are not known to have left in Acadia any indications of their passage. During this interval the deposition of the Oölite, Chalk, and Tertiary formations was proceeding in Europe, and extensive accumulations. were spread over wide areas in North America. They are to be found on both slopes of the Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains.

The fossil fruits of Brandon, Vt., and the remains buried in the crumbling cliffs of Martha's Vineyard off the Southern coast of Massachusetts prove that a subtropical climate prevailed in this part of America during a part of the Tertiary Age. That such climatic conditions existed here at a period geologically so recent, would, to one who considers only the present range of temperature, seem highly improbable; but that this was the case is abundantly shown by the geological discoveries in the western part of the continent and in Iceland, where the remains of plants and animals of these intervening ages have been found. Not only does the fauna indicate the prevalence of a mild temperature in high latitudes during this period, but the character of the vegetation, in a great part of British America, was such as is now to be met with only in subtropical and warm temperate regions. Palms, cinnamon trees, and magnolias are known to have grown. on the Upper Missouri and in British Columbia, and the genus Sequoia, to which belong the giant trees of California, with many species of hardwood (deciduous) trees as far north as Iceland.

The remarkable Miocine flora of this island has been studied by Prof. Heer, who concludes that at this period, evergreen forests must have extended to the pole. In Europe there are indications of a gradual refrigeration of the globe throughout the time of the Pliocene, but in Acadia, where this formation is wanting, we find the earlier tertiaries succeeded by the Boulder-Clay, a formation indicating climatic conditions of extreme vigour. As far south as New Jersey this deposit is of purely glacial origin, according to Prof. Dana and other New England geologists, but in the Middle. and Southern States the evidence of ice-action is not so marked.

Much attention has been given to the study of glacial phenomena over large areas in America, but geologists are not yet agreed as to the causes of some of them. Prof. J. S. Newberry, in an able article read before the New York Lyceum of Natural History, contends for the former existence of a great continental glacier over all the region included in the hydrographic basin of the St. Lawrence and Red rivers. To this cause he ascribes the excavation of the basins of the Great Lakes (except Lake Superior) skirting the Laurentian hills from the State of New York to the valley of the McKenzie River in British America. He conceives that toward the close of the glacial epoch a great freshwater sea filled the central part of the area, extending eastward as far as the Adirondac mountains in the State of New York; and that it was bounded on the south by the water-shed between the streams which flow to the lakes, and those which seek the Mississippi, and northward by an extensive glacier resting upon the Laurentide hills. He supposes that the Erie clays spread over this area, were deposited in an immense lake during a long period of slow subsidence. At a subsequent time, as the land rose again and the waters of the lake gradually drained away, the Orange sand and other surface deposits were produced by the erosion of the clay beds, as different parts of the lacustrine area were brought under the influence of the waves.

The Orange sand of the Mississippi basin, however, appears to have had a different origin, for Prof. E. Hilgard, who had made extensive explorations in Louisiana and Texas, states that it was swept down the valley of this river by powerful southerly currents.

Both Sir W. E. Logan and Dr. Newberry assert the cotemporaneous origin of the Erie clay of the west and the Champlain (or

• Published in The American Naturalist, June, 1870.