STEATIGEAPHY OF THE LIGNITIC FORMATIONS 15 



2. Hard, whitish sandstone full of Fucoids 57 , 



3. Shaly sandstone, with abundance of Fucoids ,- 50 



4. Soft, laminated, ferruginous, sandy clay, with Fucoids 11 



5. Ferruginous shale, with Fucoids 4 



6. White block sandstone, barren 5 



7. White sandstone, with Fucoids 22 



8. Ferruginous shaly sandstone, with Fucoids 33 



9. Black shale No. 4, Cretaceous 147 



10. Covered space, sandstone and shale, to bed of river 153 



In both these sections, the remains of marine plants are remarked in 

 most of the sandstone strata and their intermediate clay ])eds, and as abundant 

 at the base as near the upper part; and, in this last section, they are seen 

 mixed with fragments of land plants, even to the top of the sandstone,cut like 

 a tower at the point of the highest hill facing Trinidad. 



In passing from the black shale of the Cretaceous No. 4 to this group 

 of sandstone beds overlying it, the ditference in the characters is striking, 

 not only in considering their compounds, but in the class of fossil remains 

 which they contain; the traces of deep marine life predominating in the black 

 shale, while here they have totally disappeared. The absence of the Upper 

 Cretaceous formation No. 5 might be taken into account for explaining this 

 difference; it is not the case, however, for, as seen above, the Upper Creta- 

 ceous sandstone beds are as definitely characterized by their fossil remains as 

 a deep marine formation as the second group No. 4 Now, at the Raton, in the 

 sandstone above No. 4, marine life marks its activity only by the abundant 

 remains of Fucoids, indicating by their growth a comparatively shallow water. 

 They attest, therefore, a slow upheaval of the bottom of the sea, in which 

 they appear to have lived, for their stems penetrate the sandstone in every 

 direction. And this indication is still more manifest in the great abundance 

 o{ debris o( land plants, which, apparently ground by the waves, seem to have 

 been thrown upon the shore and mixed in the sand with Fucoidal remains. 

 This slow upheaval and its result in the formation of a new land are read as 

 in a book in the fossil remains of this group of sandstone, and every observer 

 should forcibly admit that these memorials of old expose the beginning of a 

 new era, or of what we call a new formation. 



it has been seen already that Dr. Hayden has everywhere remarked the 

 same distribution, the same conformability of stratification, the same charac- 



