What a sliding, slipping, torn, and rugged ruinous heap is that far-famed Copt Point itself, with its ravines of shattered clay-splinters, and its shivering peaks and promontories. How the rotten clay breaks and crumbles away beneath your foot-tread, and goes scattering down in multitudes of leaping, racing, bounding chips on to the hard and sea-worn rocks below. Pyritous casts of Ammonites, amber-like Belemnites, and phosphatic casts of Nuculæ, with their two prominent muscle-marks, strew the cindery-looking ground; while here and there, like horny flakes, are the thin angular shell-pieces of Pollicipes.

The prominent feature of a large portion of the province of Canada is the presence of various limestone rocks belonging to the Silurian formations. Until lately, the existence of caverns in these rocks, as well as in those lying subjacent—namely the Laurentian of Sir William Logan, was almost unknown; as, with the exception of an isolated account here and there, no regular description of any cavern had appeared. Owing to the labours of the Canadian Geological Survey, and of several private individuals, a number of caverns have been discovered at distances remote from one another; some of these have received but a passing notice in the publications of the Survey, and are not, therefore, useful as a means of reference. The present communication, it is hoped, will supply that deficiency, as in it I purpose to embody short descriptive accounts of all the caverns of Canada which are known up to the present time. The details of some of them are not so full as could be desired; nevertheless, with all the available sources of information within my reach, together with personal observation in some, on the whole the general descriptions may be relied upon as accurate, and as containing a correct account of the particular geological formations in which they lie.