I9II.] STEVENSON— FORMATIOX OF COAL BEDS. 637 



places at the present day." The sandstone lamin?e, by their arrange- 

 ment, suggest the washing up of sand around stems in shallow water 

 with small waves. This is shown more clearly at a locality in the 

 Newcastle district, where one can determine the direction whence 

 the current came by position of laminae marking eddies behind the 

 stems. Prostrate stems, often of same species with the vertical 

 stumps, recall the prostrate trees among stumps in " submarine or 

 sunken forests." 



Dawson^*^^ first visited the South Joggins region in 1852, accom- 

 panied by Lyell. Somewhat later, he studied the section in great 

 detail and gave his results in a series of memoirs published by the 

 London Geological Society ; but the final discussion appeared in the 

 second edition of his Acadian Geology. Seventy coal horizons, some 

 of them merely " fossil dirt beds," were seen in a vertical section of 

 4,700 feet and besides these there are many horizons at which rooted 

 stumps were seen. Drifted trunks were observed in the sandstones, 

 but those are neglected here, reference being made only to such 

 remains as were associated with Stigmarian underclays. 



Erect stumps were seen in the thin shale roof of Coal 13. In 

 the interval of 38 feet -between Coals 16 and 17 are several Stig- 

 marian clays, one of which supports large stumps of SigiUaria with 

 plant remains about their foot ; the red shale roof of Coal 19 shows 

 an erect SigiUaria, while erect Calauiitcs stems are present over Coal 

 21 and a Stigmarian soil at some distance below Coal 22 bears a 

 number of erect SigiUaria stumps. Division IV. shows erect stems 

 of SigiUaria, Lepidodcndron and Catamites at 44 horizons in a ver- 

 tical section of 2,539 feet ; several of the underclays, bearing erect 

 stumps, underlie thin coal beds and, in at least one case, Coal 15, the 

 erect stumps are associated with rain marks and footprints, clear 

 evidence of sub-aerial position. At one horizon, the stumps yielded 

 three species of batrachians with land shells and insects ; those 

 stumps are rooted in coaly shale forming the roof of a coal bed. 

 " A coaly stump and an irregular layer of mineral charcoal, arising 

 apparently from the decay of similar stumps " were seen in Coal 33a, 

 while above that bed in a reddish shale is "a patch of gray sand- 



^'^J. W. Dawson, "Acadian Geolog>'," 2d Ed., London, 1868. pp. 150-179. 



