■68 BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY S0CTE1Y. 



Heretofore there has been recognized at Quaco only two members 

 of the Mesozoic system, viz., the bright red sandstones, so conspicuous 

 on numerous cliffs along the coast, and the overlying pebble beds. A 

 third member of this system, probably as important in volume and 

 thickness as the two lower ones together, was recognized in our excur- 

 sions along the eastern part of the shore. This member is so like the 

 Lower Carboniferous rocks that it has heretofore been confounded 

 with them. The proofs that it is Mesozoic are the following : 1. Its 

 lowest bed are found to graduate by alternation of measures into the 

 pebbly member of the heretofore recognized New Red Sandstone 

 2. Its conglomerates are full of rounded fragments of dark-red shale, 

 which in this district can have no other source than the Lower Car- 

 boniferous rocks. 3. The plant remains found in its grey sandstone 

 layers (though poorly preserved), by the nabellate leaves with stout 

 petioles, and the leathery strap-shaped leaves that are found, as well 

 -as by the absence of Sigillaria, Lipidodendron, and Calamites, appear 

 to be a Mesozoic assemblage, and certainly are not of the ordinary 

 Carboniferous type. 



This upper member of the Red Sandstone series holds the shore 

 from Melvin's Beach to Fown's Beach ; it also appears on the shore at 

 Berry's Beach, beyond which in going westward it passes inland : and 

 it has a considerable width behind Quaco Village. 



Our party visited the intrusive trap and manganese deposits at 

 Quaco Head. The trap has forced its way through the red sandstones, 

 partially altering it and discharging the red color from the sandstone 

 for some distance from the line of contact ; the trap also becomes fine 

 grained and loses its feldspar crystals near the contact with the sand- 

 stone. 



The shores at Quaco and the surface deposits there abound with 

 pebbles derived from the pre-Cambrian volcanic rocks of the hills 

 inland. There is the greater profusion of these because the great 

 pebble beds of the middle member of the Mesozoic or Red Sandstone 

 system abound with fragments from this source At Vaughan's Creek 

 (McComber's Beach) the pebbles of the conglomerate are mostly of 

 purple quartzite and f el site, sometimes without any admixture of sand, 

 so that when the calcareous cement which holds them in place weathers 

 away, they fall to the beach in great numbers, and repeat in modern 

 times their accumulation as beach-shingle in the Mesozoic Age. 



