The Geological History of PlantsDawson, John William, Sir
Science
The Geological History of Plants
Dawson, John William, Sir
Paleobotany
The quantity of graphite in the Lower Laurentian series is enormous. Some
years ago, in 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 six
hundred 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 20 per cent, of the pure material, is worked. As it appears
in the excavation made by the quarrymen, it resembled a bed of coal; and
a block from this bed, about four feet thick, was a prominent object in
the Canadian department of the Colonial Exhibition of 1886. 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 thirty-five hundred 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.[D]
[D] Matthew in "Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society," vol. xxi.,
p. 423. "Acadian Geology," p. 662.
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