"The quantity of graphite in the Upper Laurentian series is enormous.
In a recent visit to the township of Buckingham, on the Ottawa River,
I examined a band of limestone believed to be a continuation of that
described by Sir W. E. Logan as the Green Lake Limestone. It was
estimated to amount, with some thin interstratified bands of gneiss,
to a thickness of 600 feet or more, and was found to be filled with
disseminated crystals of graphite and veins of the mineral to such
an extent as to constitute in some places one-fourth of the whole;
and making every allowance for the poorer portions, this band cannot
contain in all a less vertical thickness of pure graphite than from
twenty to thirty feet. In the adjoining township of Lochaber Sir W. E.
Logan notices a band from twenty-five to thirty feet thick, reticulated
with graphite veins to such an extent as to be mined with profit for
the mineral. At another place in the same district a bed of graphite
from ten to twelve feet thick, and yielding twenty per cent, of the
pure material, is worked. When it is considered that graphite occurs in
similar abundance at several other horizons, in beds of limestone which
have been ascertained by Sir W. E. Logan to have an aggregate thickness
of 3,500 feet, it is scarcely an exaggeration to maintain that the
quantity of carbon in the Laurentian is equal to that in similar areas
of the Carboniferous system. It is also to be observed that an immense
area in Canada appears to be occupied by these graphitic and Eozoon
limestones, and that rich graphitic deposits exist in the continuation
of this system in the State of New York; while in rocks believed to be
of this age near St. John, New Brunswick, there is a very thick bed
of graphitic limestone, and associated with it three regular beds of
graphite, having an aggregate thickness of about five feet.[16]
[Footnote 16: Matthew, in _Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._, vol. xxi. p. 423.
"Acadian Geology," p. 662.]
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