296 THE PICTOU COAL FIELD — POOLE. 



Town branch railway. Noticeable points in it are the exclusive 

 presence of shales and fireclays in the upper part, the coming in 

 of arenaceous beds below the Deep seam, and the acquisition of 

 reddish colour below the Oil Coal by the measures elsewhere 

 assumed to belong to the Millstone Grit series. Not one of the 

 several mentioned seams A to G has yet been proved to be of 

 the thickness stated in the section or to be of any commercial 

 value. Possibly at some future time a drift southward from the 

 McGregor seam in depth may find workable coal in one or more 

 of these seams, for it is not unreasonable to expect the marked 

 improvement both in thickness and quality found in depth to 

 take place in the worked seams might also be found to aflfect 

 them. 



Having reason to suspect incorrect the common view as 

 shown on the Survey map regarding the position of the crops of 

 the coal seams in the west corner of the Albion area, west of the 

 hill to where the explorations in the trial pits O and Q ceased in 

 1852,* other trial pits were in 1889 put down in this doubtful 

 ground. The result of this later exploration accounts for the 

 difference between the Survey map and the present one respect- 

 ing this locality. The Main seam was traced west as far as 

 shown, to a point sufficiently far to overlap a series of exposures 

 along the crop of the Deep seam and make it clear that it was 

 an extension of the latter and not of the former, as previously 

 supposed, that crossed the brook in two places and which had 

 been found 5 chains west of the west corner of the area at a 

 depth of 32 feet dipping N. 10° E. 15^. When this was satisfac- 

 torily proven, data relating to lower seams dropped easily into 

 place. The crop known next in descending order at the mouth 

 of a small branch on the east side of the brook in the same 

 locality and which had been stripped for some distance for local 

 consumption years ago, necessarily was that of the Third seam. 

 It also had been proved by a Itorehole across McCulloch's brook 

 at the mouth of Grog brook. It may here be noted that the 

 crop of the Deep seam is exposed on the east side of the brook 



* Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc. 



