Shaler.] 28 [Oct. 3, 



along our shores should be brought to the attention of geologists, in 

 order that a full exploration of their contents may be made. In the 

 following notes, the author desires to direct attention to a point 

 within easy access of members of this Society, which he is confident 

 will, if properly worked over, aflford a great deal of information con- 

 cerning the distribution of life during the first stages of the last glacial 

 period. 



The beds in question are exposed by a shore section in the town of 

 Gloucester, Mass., at a point about three hundred yards south of the 

 Pavilion Hotel, and between that building and a small earthwork 

 battery known as Stage Fort. The greatest height of the cliff face is 

 about twenty-five feet. Throughout nearly the whole extent of the 

 section, which is about two hundred yards in length, the base of the 

 beds is hidden beneath the drift matter which covers the beach ; at 

 the southern extremity, however, adjacent to Stage Fort, the syenite 

 •which constitutes the mass of Cape Ann, rises above the sea level, 

 and shows very plainly the contact of the base of the drift section 

 with the bed rock. 



Passing from the lowest portion of the section towards the summit, 

 we find fii-st a close grained, much indurated sand, with no distinct 

 lines of bedding but splitting horizontally into thin layers. The 

 structure of the material is such that it can hardly be described as a 

 sandstone, though it is much harder than ordinary sands which have 

 acquired compactness by their own weight without the influence of 

 other metamorphic action. The physical condition of the mass is 

 that of a very fine sand mixed with considerable clay. There is no 

 general admixture of pebbles, but occasionally worn fragments of 

 rock of a different character from any recognized in the superficial 

 drift of the vicinity, are found scattered through the fine material. 

 None of these were found above the size of a billiard ball, and they 

 are so infrequent that often several cubic feet of the material may be 

 searched through without finding more than one or two specimens. 

 All the pebbles examined seemed to be of a true glacial character, 

 little, if at all, affected by shore wearing. This character of material 

 continues to a point about ten feet above high water mark, where, 

 without any change in the general structure, some thin layers of a 

 more clayey texture than the main mass are intercalated, in which, 

 and for a little distance above and below, all the fossils which were 

 found were imbedded. Above this point the same general structure 

 continued to a height at the most elevated point of about eighteen 

 feet above high water mark. Capping this bed with a tolerably dis- 

 tinct line of demarkation is a mass of the ordinary semistratified peb- 

 ble drift, such as is found all over this section below the level of one 

 hundred feet. 



