1898] MARYLAND ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 397 



bedding lines which seem to show that each was separated 

 by a short interval of cessation before the next was begun 

 to be laid down. Fine sedimentation ceased before the 

 third bed was completed, and the deposition of coarser 

 sands in well arranged strata gave evidence of the exer- 

 cise of more powerful energies in the transportation of 

 materials. 



Other exposures of like composition, but of less thick- 

 ness, occur on Patapsco neck, at Canton, on Bear creek, 

 head of Humphrey's creek. Back river and Bodkin creek. 

 A still larger exposure appears on the Chesapeake Bay 

 shore, beginning about one and a half miles south of 

 Bodkin point and extending nearly 500 feet in the direc- 

 tion of Gibson's island. After an interval of a few rods 

 the black clay again appears and continues along to a 

 distance of perhaps half a mile from the drain separating 

 that island from the mainland. The basal bed of black 

 clay is very thick along this line, but it becomes much 

 thinner as we approach its southern end. At its northern 

 end, it is fully fourteen feet thick, and rests in a remark- 

 able basin, bounded on the north side by a belt of Upper 

 Cretaceous brown sandstone which bends down in a steep 

 slope beneath the level of tide. At this point the high 

 coast bounds a deep cove, in which numerous stumps of 

 the modern Bald Cypress stand rooted and in place. 

 Some of these stumps belong to trees which were six to 

 eicfht feet in diameter near the base, while the greater 

 number measure but two or three feet; just as we now 

 find them in the present Cypress Swamps of Worcester 

 County. The stumps at this place are more changed, and 

 differ from most of those in Baltimore, by reason of their 

 having been soaked for a number of years in carbon- 

 aceous mud, charged with astringent solutions of alum 

 and iron, derived from the lignite of the adjoining Cre- 

 taceous clays. This has had the effect of consolidating 



