STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF FOSSIL FUELS. 67 



a thin seam of coal. He conceived that it had been floated in, 

 attached to the roots of a tree, " wherefore the coal beds are formed 

 partly from driftwood." 



The coals of New Zealand for the most part are lignitic or sub- 

 bituminous, but no woody structure is mentioned by any observer. 



Greenland. 



The existence of coal in the Cretaceous of western Greenland 

 was made certain by the work of White and Schuchert-^ during 

 1897. Their observations were made chiefly on the Nugsuak Penin- 

 sula. The Kome or lower division, as exposed near Kook, con- 

 sists of shaly or laminated sandstones with thin beds of dark shale 

 containing much carbonaceous matter, so abundant at times as to 

 make the shale combustible, but not enough to justify one in calling 

 it coal or lignite. The whole succession is so irregular that sections 

 are not comparable. The plants are conifers, cycads and ferns with 

 some indeterminate leaves of dicotyledons. Near Ugarartorsuak, 

 all divisions of the Cretaceous were examined. The Kome, in a 

 section of 270 feet, has 20 feet of " thin coals with shaly partings 

 and 2 bands of carbonaceous shale." Another section of about 305 

 feet, belonging to the Atane or middle division, has several beds of 

 coaly shale, a coal seam, i foot 6 inches and a mass of " thin sand- 

 stones and coals," 10 feet. The flora differs from that of the Kome 

 as, besides cycads, conifers and ferns, it has 8 species of dicotyle- 

 dons. A third flora, in still higher beds, is related to the second 

 and both seem to be related to the Upper Cretaceous. Dark beds 

 with huge ferruginous concretions, have fossils of types character- 

 izing the Montana of western United States. 



A dark shale, 75 feet thick, seen near Ata on the southerly shore 

 of the peninsula, has leaves and large fragments of tree trunks with 

 an invertebrate fauna, which Stanton takes to be the same with 

 that of the highest beds on the north shore and equivalent to Ceno- 

 manian. The highest division of the Cretaceous, Patoot of Heer. 

 is exposed near Patoot, where the lowest beds are at 470 feet above 

 the sea. The fossils are of Senonian age and some of the plants are 



21 D. White and C. Schuchert, " Cretaceous Series of the West Coast of 

 Greenland," Bull. Gcol. Soc. Amcr., Vol. 9, 1898, pp. 343-368. 



