may judge from the testimony of those gentlemen who, from time to time, have visited this country.

In Europe it is frequently the custom to guard with jealous care certain operations which really have no merit whatever, but are merely examples of imperfect and antiquated work. I fear this is the case to a very large extent in England, as I have had frequent opportunities of seeing, but this is not due so much to inefficiency on the part of the man in charge, as to the bigotry and self-superiority of the proprietor, or chief of affairs, whose sole idea of excellence is to run carefully in the footsteps of his great-grandfather, or some ancient relative, who got rich in the business because he couldn't help it.

Believe me, gentlemen, a man who knows his work well, and is not handicapped by conditions altogether beyond his control, need not fear competition, for in the race for progress he practically solves that great problem which prevails throughout the whole range of life, viz.: "The survival of the fittest."

AN OCCURRENCE OF COPPER GLANCE NORTH OF LAKE HURON, WITH NOTES ON THE STRUCTURE

OF THE LOCALITY.

BY JAMES T. B. IVES, F.G. S., TORONTO, CANADA.

(Colorado Meeting, June, 1889.)

THE variety of copper-ore to which these notes refer is comparatively rare, and, so far as I am aware, has not been recorded hitherto as occurring in Ontario. Moreover, the rocks of this locality differ so much in nature and mode of occurrence from the orebearing rocks of the western United States, that a description of them may be interesting.

A line drawn upon a map of the region of the great lakes from the mouth of the Severn river at the Southern end of Georgian Bay, following the Canadian shore north westward, and leaving Manitoulin island to the south, will describe the boundary between the Archæan rocks lying north of it and the Silurian rocks southward.

The former are Lower Laurentian as far as the Indian village of Killarney, at which point their line of separation from the Huronian comes in, and continues westward, trending thence to Wahnapitae village, where the river of that name is crossed by the Canadian Pacific railway. In these Huronian beds occurs the Vermilion Company's gold-mine, in Dennison township, thirty miles northeast of the locality described in this paper; and ten miles farther, in the same direction, are the extensive copper- and nickel-mines of the Canadian Copper Company. Ninety miles west, along the coast, is the Bruce Mine, classical in the history of copper-mining, but now idle and possibly exhausted.

The Silurian rocks of Manitoulin island and the headland which approaches it from the south represent several successive formations. Those exposed along the southern shores of the island and peninsula are limestones of the Guelph formation. North of them is a broad belt of Niagara limestone, succeeded on the island by Hudson river beds, with patches of Utica shales and Trenton limestones, while along the northern shores are found Birdseye and Black River, and probably Chazy beds. All these are exposed in succession, a gentle uprise to the north having promoted the erosion of the northern beds. As a rule, the lines of outcrop are marked by escarpments, which form a conspicuous feature in the landscape, and almost make it possible to distinguish the succession of the formations in viewing the island from the deck of a steamboat at a distance of several miles. The southern dip of these beds is, however, so slight that it is not perceptible to the eye, even when considerable tracts are exposed to view. I have seen in various parts of the island floors of limestone flags, extending for probably one hundred paces from east to west, and somewhat less from north to south, apparently as level as though paved by man.

Just north of the eastern end of the Manitoulin island is a narrow peninsula, extending into the North Channel in a direction slightly south of west. To the south of it is another in the form of a tuningfork of a similar size and trend. Upon the new admiralty chart the form and size of these peninsulas is more accurately shown than on ordinary maps. The northern one, with which we are here concerned, is about ten miles long, its greatest width being one mile. The bay which separates it from the peninsula south of it is nowhere more than a mile wide, narrowing at the outlet to oneeighth of a mile, and its length is seven miles. I draw attention to this parallelism of the peninsulas because it is characteristic of the

distribution of such land as rises above water-level, whether as promontories or islands, and is doubtless connected with the geological structure of the country.

The Sault Ste. Marie steamboats stop at several villages on Manitoulin island, of which the one nearest to this peninsula is Little Current. Looking out thence toward these headlands, and the mainland generally, it is striking how very different their rocks are from those of the island itself, the appearance being that of a range of lofty hills, mostly of rock, so white in places and in certain lights as to give the impression that they are covered with snow. Twenty miles eastward from Little Current is a point half-way along the peninsula. As the boat approaches the shore, the difference in aspect becomes more conspicuous. Instead of the horizontal, usually pale buff limestones of the island, there are rounded hills of crystalline rock, either white or tinted blue, green, or brown approaching black. In leaving the island, however, the horizontal Silurian beds are not entirely left behind. They may be seen in isolated patches as beaches and shore-line sections, from two to ten feet in height. In narrow channels such beds may frequently be seen on one side, while on the other are crystalline rocks. I observed three varieties: a buff sandy (or rather calcareo-arenaceous) conglomerate, some of the pebbles in which are white quartz, jasper and chlorite schist; lithographic limestone, superimposed upon the former; and variegated shales. The latter occur on the peninsula, close to the deposit to be described, and also several miles northwest of that point. They rise at the water's edge to a height of six or eight feet, and consist of laminæ, averaging one inch in thickness, of three well-defined colors-brick-red, buff and copper-green-the colors usually alternating, but two being sometimes mottled on one of the tile-like lamina. While this bed resembles the country-rock at Sault Ste. Marie, and is probably of the same age, its lamination is finer.

There is a definite succession of the two kinds of crystalline rock mentioned above. The white is quartzite, at places highly talcose, and frequently, at other points, passing into quartzose conglomerate by inclusion of pebbles. The dark rock is slate, likewise conglomeritic in some of its beds, and occasionally passing into chlorite schist. The rock where I moored my boat and pitched my tent, which consequently became very familiar to me, was of bright pink quartzose conglomerate, with partings of tale schist of pink and greenish tints. It was only on close scrutiny that I discovered the minute

pebbles which the quartzite contained, and of which, on examination, I found it was almost made up in places.

These two varieties of rocks are distributed in bands running parallel with the length of the peninsula, about S. 80° W. There are eight or ten such bands, showing distinct lines of separation. Standing on such a line on an elevated spot, and looking east or west, the junction may be seen as far as the eye can reach, excepting at intervals where obscured by vegetation or lost in the hollows. The rocks have been sculptured into ridges and furrows parallel with the direction of the peninsula and the upturned edges of the beds. This sculpturing is doubtless due to inequality in the hardness of the strata constituting both the quartzite and the slate. It must not be supposed that the ridges are alternately of quartzite and slate; the junction between those rocks may occur along a ridge or a hollow, or on the slope between. The quartzite has certainly resisted erosion more than the slate, the bolder ridges being of the former rock, which also greatly exceeds the latter in quantity,—that is to say, in the relative thickness of the beds,-probably as three to one. They range from ten to several hundred feet in thickness. Besides the longitudinal ridges and hollows, there are minor transverse depressions which give the hills, as seen from the south or north, a serrated appearance.

Although my observations were specially directed to a particular locality, situated near the center of the peninsula, I may remark that in physical features this peninsula resembles the islands, promontories and mainland of the region generally, except in the absence of dioritic dykes, which are common in the neighborhood. At this central point the peninsula narrows to about a quarter of a mile, and the hills are lower than elsewhere, being fifty to two hundred feet high, whereas they are generally two or three hundred feet in height. Two of the transverse gullies here are almost level with the bays on either side; and a lakelet occupies part of the space between them, they being only a quarter of a mile apart. An old Indian portage along one of the gullies attests that the natives have realized the convenience of this natural gateway between the waters.

Here an interesting dislocation of the strata has taken place. Two beds of slate (A and B, in Fig. 1), which run parallel for a considerable distance with a band (C) of quartzite between them, come together, the quartzite thinning out. This is evidently due to faulting, which has caused a relative downthrow of one portion as

compared with the other, the plane of displacement being slightly oblique to the plane of bedding, and the movement more considerable at one end than at the other. Besides this unmistakable fault there is other evidence of disturbance, for the rocks are traversed in all directions by minute veins of quartz. The slate-bed at this point is impregnated with grains of hematite. The next ridge north of this is quartzite. It rises to a height of about one hundred and seventy feet, and at that end of it, adjacent to the western gully and an

FIG. 1.

EXCAVATION

inlet (shown on the sketch), it also is charged with hematite. The rock appears to have been more or less completely converted into hematite. There is no defined separation of the ore-bed or gangue from the enclosing rock, the latter gradually passing into solid ore. An exception was noted at one point where an irregular band of chloritic schist was observed, from one to several inches in width, marking the line of separation. This hematitic impregnation imparts a reddish-brown color to quartzite and slate alike. Whether this deposit of iron occupies the hollow separating the two ridges