1895.] NATUKAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 135 



deposits, with the sands, and in such positions are usually laminated. 

 Massive and stratified beds also occur in many portions of the area, 

 sometimes nearly free from sand, but the greater portion occur as 

 sandy or micaceous clays. Plastic potter's clay and refractory clays 

 occur in abundance. In color they are generally dark blue, gray 

 and black, although deposits of red, brown and yellow clay occur 

 and frequently thin beds of white clay are found among the upper 

 members of the series. 



The lignites belonging to this stage and from which these beds 

 derive their name occur widely spread throughout the whole area ; 

 they lie in beds of varying thicknesses, from two to four feet being 

 most common, although six, nine and ten feet deposits are by no 

 means of rare occurrence. Beds of even greater thickness have 

 been reported as being found in well-borings. The actual number 

 of lignite beds existing in these deposits is not known. Six have 

 been recorded as underlying each other at distances varying from 

 two to one hundred and twenty feet apart. 



Silicious and calcareous sandstones and limestones occur at dif- 

 ferent portions of the area occupied by these beds, but the glauconitie 

 greensand marls so conspicuous in the Alabama lignitic are every- 

 where absent from the Texas beds. 



The lignitic beds have been divided into two divisions — an upper 

 and lower — distinguished chiefly by their structure and composition. 

 The upper or Queen City beds, so called from their typical develop- 

 ment near that place in Cass county, comprise a series of laminated 

 or thinly stratified white and red sands and sandy clays frequently 

 merging into one another and forming a mottled sandy clay or 

 clayey sand. The lamime generally do not exceed one-fourth to 

 half inch but the white sandy clay frequently expands to six or more 

 feet filling pockets or depressions in the wavy laminated deposits. 

 In this pocket-form these clays become less sandy and more alumi- 

 nous than when occurring in thin scams. The section at Queen 

 City shows these beds to have a thickness of 65 feet. This section 



is: 01 



1. Gravelly ore, and broken pieces of nodular ore, 



sandstone and sand 5 feet. 



2. Laminated ore and sand in thin strata .... 4 " 



61 Second Annual Report Geol. Survey of Texas 1890, p. 72. 



