80 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF FOSSIL FUELS. 



lo feet thick ; but he did not find them persistent. In the North 

 Saskatchewan portion of the area, the important coal is also near 

 the top of the formation. The chief seam was seen first near Win- 

 tering Hills as a bed of carbonaceous shale; but farther north it 

 becomes coal and increases steadily until it becomes 25 feet thick. 

 Several seams were seen in the lower portion of the formation, but 

 the most persistent horizon is about 160 feet above the Pierre. 

 Cross-bedded sandstone was observed at many localities. 



About twenty-five years later, when the region had been opened 

 up, Dowding''^ reported upon the Edmonton District, a portion of the 

 area studied by Tyrrell. There he found about 700 feet of Laramie 

 (Edmonton, St. Mary), a succession of shales and sands, too often 

 merely clays and sands, a brackish-water formation between the 

 marine Pierre and the fresh-water Pashkapoo of the Tertiary. It 

 is rich in coal seams, which increase from south to north. The im- 

 portant coal horizon is near the top of the formation and it has been 

 followed from the Red Deer to the Pembina River, becoming thicker 

 toward the north and northwest. Three seams were seen on the 

 Pembina, of which the highest is 26 feet thick ; on the north Sas- 

 katchewan, a seam, belonging to the same coal group in the upper 

 part of the formation, is 25 feet. Below the middle of the forma- 

 tion, Dowling saw another coal group ; some of its seams are lenses 

 of moderate extent, while others have been traced by borings under 

 a considerable area ; but they vary greatly in thickness and may be 

 lenses. Dowling is evidently far from certain that the main seam 

 of the region is persistent. 



McConnell'*'' states that the Laramie in northern Alberta has nu- 

 merous seams of inferior lignite and ironstone. Rose reporting on 

 the Lance of southwestern Saskatchewan, refers to the formation 

 as a transition from the marine Fox Hills to the fresh-water Fort 

 Union. The rocks are slightly consolidated and the seams of lignite 

 are unimportant. 



*■' D. B. Dowling, Memoir 8-E, 1910, pp. 13, 16, 18, 27, 28. 

 4c R. G. McConnell, Ann. Reps., Vol. YI.-D, 1893, p. 53 ; B. Rose, Summ. 

 Reps, for 1914, pp. 64-67. 



