26 Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 



cla}' slates, shales and conglomerates, generally ferruginous and brick 

 red, but often gray and drab. The shales are occasionall}' inarl}', and 

 these and the sandstones are sometimes saliferous. Many of the beds 

 consist of loose and uncompacted materials, and are therefore easily 

 abraded. 



The most important and conspicuous member of the series, is a large 

 body of black shales, which enclose seams of bituminous coal 2 to 6 

 feet. This coal lies near the base of the sj^stem in both belts, and is 

 underlaid on Dan river by shales; and on Deep river by sandstones 

 and conglomerates, the latter constituting the lowest member of the 

 series, and being in places ver3^ coarse. And near the eastern margin 

 in Wake county, where the belt reaches its greatest breadth (some 15 

 miles), the conglomerates are of great thickness and very coarse, un- 

 compacted and rudely stratified, resembling somewhat the half strati- 

 fied drift of the mountain slopes, the fragments often little worn, and 

 sometimes 10 to 12 inches in diameter, and evidently derived from the 

 Huronian rocks of the hills to the eastward. The conglomerates of 

 the Dan river belt are among the upper members of the series, and are 

 mostl^^ fine and graduating to grits and sandstones. 



The black shales near the base of the system contain beds of fire 

 clay and black band iron ore, interstratified with the coal. They are 

 also highly fossiliferous, especially on Deep river. Silicified trunks of 

 trees are very abundant in the lower sandstones, as may be seen con- 

 splcuousl}'^ near Germantown, in Stokes countj^, the public road being 

 in a measure obstructed by the multitude of fragments and entire 

 trunks and projecting stumps of a petrified Triasuic forest; and simi- 

 lar petrifactions are abundant in the Deep river belt, occurring in this, 

 as in the other, among the sandstones near the horizon of the coal. 



The actual vertical depth to the underlying ArchiBan rocks on Dan 

 river may not exceed 1000 feet, but what was the original thickness of 

 the strata before denudation began can only be conjectured. The beds 

 on Dan river, however, measured at right angles to the dip, gives a 

 minimum thickness for that side of the formation of near 10,000 feet. 

 In the section of the Deep river belt, which is exposed in the valley of 

 the Yadkin, not only is there a width of six miles with the usual dip 

 of 20°, but there is an additional outcrop more than a mile in breadth, 

 ten miles south of the principal belt, which preserves the southeasterly 

 dip of nearly 20°, and hence the calculation for a minimum thickness, 

 at this margin, must be based on a breadth of 16 miles, which gives a 

 thickness of more than 25,000 feet. 



There is no way of accounting for the present position of these beds 



