At the recent meeting of the Royal Society of Canada at Toronto there was read by a friend of the late Dr, W. H. Collins, director of the Geological Survey of Canada, a paper composed by the latter on his deathbed, in which he explained the origin of the famous. nickel deposits at Sudbury in Northern Ontario, now being successfully ex-plaited by the International Nickel Company to the profit of its shareholders.
In his paper Dr" Collins, who died last January and who had spent nine years in an investigation of the problem, explained that the copper-nickel ores of the Sudbury district are associated with a great saucer-shaped mass of rock called norite. (More than 500,000,000 years ago when the norite and the sulphides from which the metals are produced were forced up molten from the depths of the earth, they came up in horizontal layers and the ores which are now being mined sank through the lighter layers to the bottom. As the rock cooled it was bent into a saucer shape by pressure ripping and cracking the layers of rock beneath it and forming great fissures. Into these fissures and a layer at the bottom there sank the molten sulphides which are now mined as ores of nickel, copper, gold, and metals of the platinum-group. By Dr. Collins' calculations at least 300,000,000 tons of. nickel ore settled, although it constitutes only one part in every 2,500 of the total rock mass. In the rock itself there are thre parts of nickel ore in every 2,000, but it did not separate itself from the rest and mining of it is impracticable.
Among the audience who listened to the reading of this paper was Dr. 'A, P, Coleman, Emeritus Professor Of Geology at the University of "Toronto, who is now 85 years of age; his theories about the Sudbury nickel basis had been the basis for the prospecting, ard. development work in that area and he had now the satisfaction of hearing them confirmed by the valedictory paper of a colleague.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.