1888] MARYLAND ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 13 



other trees and plants, are readily recognizable therein, and the 

 vertebrae of small saurians and fishes have likewise been found 

 mixed through the sand and clay. The principal deposit of 

 this kind occurs near the mouth of Elk river on its southern 

 side, begins about a mile farther back, and gradually ascends 

 until it forms the base of a bluflp which rises fifty to sixty feet 

 above the tide on the Chesapeake Bay shore. Up the river, 

 where the deposit is but five to ten feet above the water, it is 

 more or less mixed with the red and white clay upon which it 

 is seen to rest; but in the higher part, facing the bay, the 

 underlying clay lies deep beneath the beach. At this point, 

 coarse pale brown sands, invaded by indurated layers, form the 

 lowest visible portion of this series, and upon these rest about 

 twenty feet of the distinctly laminated sands. Above these, 

 drifts of coarse ferruginous sands and gravels, more or less 

 obliquely bedded in places, rise in thick deposits to near the 

 top of the hill. Throughout the whole length of the laminated 

 exposure, even in it^ broken and eroded extension up the river, 

 it is fossiliferous, but the fossils have been badly broken by the 

 forces which disturbed the beds. Lying in juxtaposition and 

 grading into these laminated sands, the black micaceous loam of 

 the Lower Marl bed is seen continuing the line of cliffs along 

 the shore until the mouth of Sassafras river is reached. This 

 series of black marls gradually decreases in height as it proceeds 

 towards the southeast, so that it is scarcely more than fifteen 

 feet high on the margin of that river. Over this the charac- 

 teristic red sand lies piled in beds thicker than the marl itself; 

 and above all, the Quaternary gravels and sands extend up to 

 the surface. Up the Sassafras river the black beds are seen at 

 intervals nearly all the way to its head. Above Betterton, as 

 long as the high cliffs project above the river, the marls are 

 broken by intervals of pale sandy clay mixtures, in which but 

 a small proportion of greensand is visible in occasional patches. 

 Here, too, the ferruginous sandstone and conglomerate crops 

 out in particularly heavy strata. Below this region, baywards, 

 the black marl is heavily loaded near the base with partially 

 stratified lignitic wood. Continuing along the shore towards 

 Howells Point, the black marl beds grade gradually lower, so 



