Lesley.] Jgg [March. 



tion in the paper on Nova Scotia coal was only to suggest one formula 

 on which the error might be discussed. I distinctly repudiated the 

 safety of instituting '' minute comparisons." My comparison of the 

 Cape Breton coals and the column at Pittsburg, was carefully made 

 in the most general manner, and the resemblance called a coincidence. 

 But the value of the comparison remains ; for it affords a new argu- 

 ment in favor of i\\Q family likeness of those parts of the general 

 coal-measures of different countries, which have a right to the specific 

 title of "productive coals." The argument also remains good, that 

 if 2000 feet of coal-measures in Missouri can be recognized in 2000 

 feet of coal-measures in Kentucky, Virginia, and Eastern Pennsyl- 

 vania, the very same system of beds, bed for bed, being demonstrated 

 first by stratigraphy, and then by palaeontology (and such is the fact), 

 why not in Nova Scotia? Even granting (3) that suflBcient skill 

 and care and opportunity combined have hitherto failed to identify 

 the coals of the Joggins with those of Wallace and Pictou, there is 

 still hope at the bottom of the box. Before Lesquereux perched 

 himself like a Simon Stylites on the slack heap at the mine's mouth, 

 our own identification of individual beds was very imperfect, and the 

 search for a complete system of identification had been abandoned 

 with the same sense of hopelessness. But how is it now ? There 

 certainly may be special diflSculties in Nova Scotia ; there are such 

 at Pottsville ; in Michigan ; but they are exceptions which prove 

 the rule, instead of affording an a fortiori argument against it. 



I have no doubt that some of the coal-measures of the British Pro- 

 vinces may have been " deposited in more or less separated areas on 

 the sides of the Devonian and Silurian hills," as Professor Dawson 

 says (2). But I confess to a complete scepticism of the great extent 

 which has been assigned to this nonconformability of the coal-mea- 

 sures upon the Lower Rocks ; first, because most of the Island of Cape 

 Breton, and much of the surface of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick 

 are confessedly unstudied and almost unknown ; secondly, because the 

 incredible thickness assigned to the coal-measures, throws doubt 

 upon the positions assigned to the nonconformable horizons ; thirdly, 

 because the coal-beds themselves stand almost vertical in many 

 places round the shores ; fourthly, because the mountains of Nova 

 Scotia, with apparently conformable carboniferous limestones, have 

 apparently an Appalachian structure and aspect, have suffered vast 

 denudation, exhibit cliff outcrops and section ravines, and may just 

 as well have carried coal upon their original backs, as we can prove 

 that our Tussey, Black Log, Nescopec, Mahoning, Buffalo, Tuscarora, 



