202 ICE IN THE CARBONIFEROUS PERIOD.—POOLE. 
Art. II.—IcE IN THE CARBONIFEROUS PERIOD.—By HENRy S. 
Poo.z, F. G.S., Assoc. R.S. M.y &c. 
Read March \1th, 1889. 
Along our Atlantic shore the beaches are strewn with travel- 
worn rocks from distant hills and equally well rounded fragments 
that have dropped from neighboring cliffs. On the Cape Breton 
coast, where seams of coal crop out and suffer erosion, they con- 
tribute to the supply of pebbles and boulders found in the coves 
and under the headlands. Every winter, clampers of ice, stranded 
at high water, freeze to the rocks and loose stones that lie on the 
shore line, and are thence lifted with the ice when the tide 
returns ; then, if the wind be favorable, they are borne away to 
be dropped in deep water. . 
When the dredge brings up from among the deposits of mud 
or sand that compose the contiguous sea bottom, any isolated 
rock or water-worn stone, no one questions how they were trans- 
ported from among their fellows on the shore ; everyone sees at 
work every year an agent that answers all the requirements of 
their surroundings. 
Before us on the table are three pebbles of coal that came from 
a bed of fireclay 450 feet below the surface, and overlying by 
some ten feet the Acadia coal seam at Westville. They were 
found when taking stone from the goaf to make stoppings for the 
pit air-courses. How came these pebbles into this position ? The 
beds above and below are uniform in quality and in thickness, and 
their geological horizon is some 2500 feet below the highest 
strata in the series. ; 
Other pebbles were said to have been also seen in the same 
bed, but they were not secured, and when sought for could not 
be found; that they were seen however, is highly probable. 
A cursory examination of the pebbles shews that at the time 
of their deposition, the coal of which they are composed was as 
