Notes on the Coal Field of Pictou. 287 



coal, as well as at the bottom, next to the oil shale, but varies in 

 its thickness from a few inches up to twenty. Throughout its 

 entire thickness it has a curled and twisted structure, many of its 

 fractures look like the casts of shells, and the sharp edges are 

 polished and stickensided. No fossils that I am aware of, have 

 hitherto been found in the "curly" oil coal, but scales of calcareous 

 spar are often met with in the joints. The oil shale next below is 

 nearly two feet thick, of a homogeneous character with a 

 shaly cleavage of various thicknesses. In this band a few scattered 

 ganoid scales have been found, and two or three varieties of lepi- 

 dodendron beautifully preserved, also leaves of Cordaites of vari- 

 ous lengths and breadths, which have undergone so little change, 

 that pieces from four to six inches long, and in breadth about a quar- 

 ter of an inch, could be removed when the shales were first split, 

 and were so elastic that they could be bent considerably without 

 breaking. In the argillaceous shales below are bands containing 

 innumerable Cypris and Spirorhis shells. The crop of a small 

 seam of coal which must underlie the oil coal about thirty feet is 

 seen in the brook. There are surface indications of the coal mea- 

 sures continuinor for a considerable distance towards the south-west 

 and this has been proved to be the case by Robert Culton, who is 

 opening up a seam of coal upon his farm upwards of one mile and 

 a quarter distant, to the rise of our mine, which will be alluded 

 to hereafter. 



There are numerous small faults running across the measures 

 in the Fraser Mine, which are uniformly downthrows to the west : 

 and I may here mention that I observed some years ago in the deep 

 seam several faults of from four to ten feet each, which could not be 

 found in the main coal workings above (the distance between the 

 two seams is 157^ iQQi\ which shows that the disturbances must 

 have taken place previous to the formation of the main coal seam ; 

 a fact which should not be lost sight of in investigating this ex- 

 tensive coal-field. 



The oil coal has been traced from the Fraser Mine eastward as 

 far as the main road, but from thence down to the East river 

 there is a great thickness of drift which appears to have cut off 

 the crop. It has not been traced on the east side of the East 

 river, and, although a l^ed of oil coal has been found and worked 

 by A. Patrick on the McLellan Brook, I am inclined to 

 think it is not a continuation of the same seam, but — from the fos- 

 sil — sof one much lower down in the coal formation. 



