CARBONIFEROUS STRATA IN THE MARITIME PROVINCES. 141 
the coal fields of Pictou County, but as yet no sufficiently detailed survey permits the 
expression of a decided opinion. In Pictou County their thickness was estimated by the 
Geological Survey at 5,567 feet in the district lying south of New Glasgow. The Coal 
Measures north of the Conglomerate are estimated by Dr. Dawson to be 670 feet thick, and 
to represent probably the upper part of the productive measures lying south of New 
Glasgow. 
Passing over the small outlier of productive measures in Antigonishe County, said to 
hold workable seams of coal, the Richmond district is met. Here, according to Mr. 
Fletcher’s report, the coal seams of Little River are contained in no less than 8,926 feet of 
strata, curiously associated with limestone and gypsum, recalling the Coal formation rocks 
of Wallace and River John, as described in Acadian Geology. 
In Cape Breton County the ravages of the Atlantic have left 1,750 feet of productive 
measures, and evidence is not wanting to show that is not far from their original maximum 
thickness. In Newfoundland the highest known divisions of the Carboniferous, paralleled 
in the geological survey of that Island with the productive measures of Cape Breton, 
have a thickness estimated at 1,300 feet. 
It is to be noticed that in the Eastern end of the area the conditions of level were not 
continued under circumstances favouring the formation of productive measures as long as 
in the western districts. And it is in those districts in which the depression was most 
prolonged that we find the succeeding horizon. 
The measures holding the Little River Coal beds, in Richmond County, appear from 
their higher dips to have undergone folding prior to the deposition of the overlying series 
now presented as a synclinal with low dips. The disturbances of the productive measures 
in Pictou County were finished toward their close, for we find the Upper Coal formation 
lying conformably on the productive measures north of New Glasgow, and both are undis- 
turbed by the numerous folds into which the productive and the preceding Carbonifer- 
ous measures are thrown south of that village. Similar foldings of a more local character 
took place at Springhill, where the productive measures appear to pass unconformably 
under the edges of the Upper Coal formation, in a series of east and west, and transverse 
folds like those of the Pictou district. 
It may now be remarked that allusion has been made to the folding and disturbance 
of large areas in New Brunswick and Cape Breton, and in Cumberland and Pictou Counties. 
We find similar foldings impressed on the Carboniferous horizons south of the Cobequids. 
In the absence of direct evidence, it may be conjectured from the comparatively undis- 
turbed state of the Upper Coal measures, and Permo-Carboniferous, where found to the 
north, that their foldings were contemporaneous with some of those alluded to above, and 
that they were not deferred to the close of the Carboniferous. 
THE Upper Coat MEASURES. 
These measures appear in the district extending from Antigonish through Pictou, Col- 
chester, and Cumberland Counties to the Joggins. At this place they are conformably 
deposited as the upper member of the great Carboniferous series, and attain a thickness of 
2,267 feet. About twenty miles to the east they appear to lie unconformably on the middle 
coal measures at Springhill, as already mentioned. They pass thence in an almost 
