The Journal of Geology, May-June 1893 / A Semi-Quarterly Magazone of Geology and Related Sciences

Transcriber’s Note
Cover and Table of Contents created by Transcriber and placed in the Public Domain.
A general exploration of the area in question, and a more detailed study of a small part of it—the Grenville District—situated in the counties of Argenteuil and Terrebonne in the Province of Quebec, was carried out by Logan and his assistants in the early years of the Canadian Geological Survey. An excellent résumé of the results of these studies is given in the “Geology of Canada,” published in 1863, which contains not only a good description of the general petrographical character and arrangement of the rocks which make up the area, but is accompanied by an atlas containing two maps illustrating this description, one showing the general distribution of the Laurentian in the eastern part of the Dominion, and the other its stratigraphical relations in the smaller area above referred to.
As a result of these studies, Logan announced his belief that the Laurentian System consisted of two great unconformable series of sedimentary rocks, to which he gave the names Upper and Lower Laurentian. The latter he considered to be divisible into a lower and an upper portion, which sub-divisions he regarded as probably conformable to one another. In the course of time these several series came to be known as the Anorthosite or Norian Series, the Grenville Series and the Fundamental or Ottawa Gneiss. Logan’s views may then be represented as follows:
Subsequently, in the southeastern corner of the Province of Ontario, in the district lying to the north of the eastern end of Lake Ontario, another series of rocks was discovered—the so-called Hastings Series. Logan supposed this to come in above the Grenville Series, while Vennor, who subsequently examined the district, believed it to be equivalent to the lower part of the Grenville Series already mentioned.
When these investigations were carried out, the microscope had not as yet been seriously employed in petrographical work. The precise composition of many of the rocks making up the several series was not recognized, the effects produced by great dynamic action were not duly considered, and the foliation possessed in a high degree by some and to a certain extent by almost all these rocks was considered, in all cases, to be a more or less obliterated survival of original bedding. The detailed mapping in the field, accompanied by microscopical work in the laboratory, by which alone conclusive results can be obtained in working out the structure of complicated areas of crystalline schists, was not carried out, in fact in many districts the construction of detailed maps was at that time practically impossible. It is not surprising therefore that, although excellent in the main, some of the results arrived at have since proved to be erroneous.