430 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. X. 



extracted, and wliicli has been referred to by several travellers, 

 is situated six and a half miles eastward from the Blackfoot 

 Agency buildings, on a coulee which runs northward to the Bow. 

 The deposit here consists of two seams, the upper averaging one 

 foot eight inches in thickness, the lower three feet. They are 

 separated by about a foot of carbonaceous shale. At this spot 

 the bed may be traced about 500 feet in natural exposures, and 

 is affected by variable dips which do not exceed 5^ in amount. 

 The thickness of the seams continues nearly uniform, and they 

 would afford, say, four feet six inches of clean coal, the whole of 

 which would be worked at once. The immediate banks of the 

 coulee are about 80 feet high at this plice, the upper two-thirds 

 being composed of drift deposits, which rest on a worn uudulat- 

 ins: surface of the rocks below. The u;eneral level of the sur- 

 rounding prairie is about 110 feet above the horizon of the coal, 

 and no exposures of the coal or associated rock are found except 

 in the river banks or coulees, which cut deeply ioto the surface 

 of the plain. 



In following the coulee northward from the spot just described, 

 the coal is frequently seen od the right or east bank for about a 

 mile, after which the coulee opens into a wider valley with slop- 

 ing grassy sides, and exposures cease. Owing to the slope of the 

 bottom of the coulee towards the river, the beds are cut into 

 more deeply u^jar its mouth, and at the last exposure the seam is 

 about thirty feet up in the bank. The upper seam is here not 

 well shown, but the lower exhibits a few inches over four feet of 

 good coal. In an exposure internipdiaie between this and the 

 first, the upper seam is eight inches thick, the shales one foot, 

 and the lower seam four feet four inches. The seams are under- 

 lain by at least twenty feet of soft whitish sandstone. The same 

 bed appears near the Agency buildings, where the Indian trail 

 going eastward, leaves the valley, but the coal seams are here 

 wanting or very poor. 



Between the Blackfoot Crossing and the coulee above de- 

 scribed, the same coal-bearing horizon appears in several places 

 in the banks of Bow River. The seams are here more favorably 

 situated for working, and of greater thickness than in the coulee. 

 The subjoined section shows their mode of occurrence at one 

 point : — 



