SURFACE GEOLOGY, PICTOU COAL FIELD—POOLE. 389 
One interesting drifted fragment was observed on the side of 
the abandoned Drummond railway, passing through the lands of 
James Cameron. 
In making a drain outside a cutting at this point, broken coal 
and black shale were turned up, so trial-pits looking for a possible 
seam of coal were, in consequence, put down. But instead of the 
expected coal measures the excavations only showed a mass, a 
couple of feet thick, thirty feet or so wide, of coal and shale 
partly imbedded in the clay, which in turn rested on undisturbed 
mottled, reddish beds of the millstone grit series. The pro- 
bability being that this particular mass of broken measures had 
drifted from a point southwestward, half-a-mile or more from 
where it was found stranded. 
The drift in some parts lies in well-defined ridges, gently 
rounded and coursing in the western portion of the coal basin 
about N. 40 HE. The parallelism of the ridges west of Stellarton 
is well marked, and their course seems entirely unaffected by the 
elevation and direction of the subjacent surfaces. 
It was at first supposed that the ridges near the river may 
have been old banks of the stream when it flowed at higher 
levels, closer inspection made it clear that there had been no such 
erosion as a river bears on the face of its banks, the sides of the 
ridges being equally rounded and uniformly graded. 
These ridges may be seen on both sides of the river, where it 
enters the coal basin, and on the flank of McGregor’s hill, in a 
series of elevations, some seven in all, having very much the 
appearance of river terraces. 
It is also evident that the depressions between adjoining ridges 
are not due to subeerial. denudation, the area drained in many 
cases not being sufficient to supply the necessary flow of water 
to mould the surface into its present form, and this opinion is 
strengthened by the knowledge that it is not a characteristic of 
mining water to traverse a country in straight lines. Some of 
the depressions are at times water-runs which do not confine 
themselves to one course but in places break through to an 
adjoining depression, the deviated course apparently following 
the strike of some underlying stratum of soft or friable material. 
