"The Monteregian Hills are a series of ancient plutonic intrusions.
Some of them (e. g. Brome Mountain) are apparently denuded laccoliths,
one of them (Mount Johnson) is a typical neck or pipe, and it is
probable that some, if not all, of them, represent the substructures of
volcanoes which at one time were in active eruption in this region.
"It is impossible to determine accurately the date of these intrusions.
In the case of Mount Royal, however, inclusions of Lower Devonian
limestone are found in the intruded rock, so that the intrusions
forming the mountain are later than Lower Devonian time.
"Since Dresser by another line of evidence, has shown that the
intrusion of Mount Shefford probably took place before late
Carboniferous time, the Monteregian intrusions probably date back to
the late Devonian or early Carboniferous period.
"It must be noted that while six of these mountains rise from the
horizontal strata of the plain, the two most easterly members of the
group, namely Shefford and Brome, while still to the west of the axis
of that range, lie well within the folded belt of the Appalachians,
although, owing to the extensive denudation from which the region
has suffered, this folding has had but little influence on the local
topography. About La Trappe, at the extreme westerly extension of the
Monteregian area, the dykes of the series cut rocks of Laurentian age,
which here form an outlier of the great Laurentian protaxis on the
north.
"The Monteregian Hills form an exceptionally distinct and well marked
petrographical province, being composed of consanguineous rocks of very
interesting and rather unusual type. These are characterized by a high
content of alkali and in the main intrusion of almost every mountain
two distinct types are found associated with one another, representing
the products of the differentiation of the original magma.
"These are--
"(a) Nepheline syenite, in some cases replaced by or associated
with pulaskite, tawite, akerite or nordmarkite.
"(b) Essexite, in some cases represented by theralite, yamaskite,
rougemonite, or rouvillite.
"It may be mentioned that yamaskite is a very basic rock type
characterized by a great predominance of pyroxene, basaltic hornblende
and ilmenite, with about two per cent of anorthite. Rougemonite
consists largely of anorthite with pyroxene as the only important
ferro-magnesian constituent. Rouvillite is a highly feldspathic variety
of theralite.
GEOLOGY OF MOUNT ROYAL
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