No. 2.] DAWSON — POST- PLIOCENE. 179 



and is overlaid by nearly twenty feet of Boulder-clay. Pressure 

 has rendered it nearly as hard as coal, though it is somewhat 

 tougher and more earthy than good coal. It has a shining streak, 

 burns with considerable flame, and approaches in its characters 

 to the brown coals or more imperfect varieties of bituminous coal. 

 It contains many small roots and branches, apparently of conifer- 

 ous trees allied to the spruces. The vegetable matter composing 

 this bed must have flourished before the drift was spread over 

 the surftice. 



In New Brunswick, stratified clays holding marine shells have 

 been found overlying the Boulder -clay, or in connexion with it, 

 especially in the Southern part of the Province, where deposits of 

 this kind occur similar to those found in Canada and in Maine, 

 though apparently on a smaller scale. These deposits, as they 

 occur near St. John, consist of gray and reddish clays, holding 

 fossils which indicate moderately deep water, and are, as to species, 

 identical with those occurring in similar deposits in Canada and 

 in Maine. They would indicate a somewhat lower temperature 

 than that of the waters of the Bay of Fundy at present, or about 

 that of the Northern part of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 



In Bailey's Report on the G-eology of Southern New Brunswick, 

 Professor Harlt has given a list of the fossils of these beds, as 

 seen at Lawlor's Lake, Duck Cove, and St. John, which I re_ 

 published with some additions in Acadian Geology. 



These New Brunswick beds are strictly continuous with, and 

 equivalent to those which extend along the coast of New England, 

 and thence ascend into the Valley of Lake Champlain, while 

 on the other side they may be considered as perfectly representing 

 in character and fossils the Leda clay of Eastern Canada. They 

 are remarkably like both in mineral character and fossils to the 

 Clyde beds of Scotland, which are probably their equivalents^ 

 The points of resemblance of the Leda clay of the coast of Maine, 

 and that of the St. Lawrence, and Labrador, were noticed by me 

 in my paper of 1860, already referred to, and have been more 

 fully brought out by Dr. .Packard, who describes the Leda clay 

 as it occurs at several localities from Eastport to Cape Cod. 

 Along this whole coast it retains its Labradoric or Gulf of St. 

 Lawrence aspect, though with the introduction of some more 

 Southern species, and the gradual failure of some more arctic 

 forms. South of Cape Cod, as in the modern sea, the Post-plio. 

 cene beds assume a much more Southern aspect in their fossils. 



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