234 Messrs. Jackson and Alger on the 
inches to four feet will include the limits of their variation. The 
first ten or twelve feet of the precipice include uniform alterna- 
tions of the grey variety alone ; above this succeeds a beautifully 
variegated kind, made up with white, grey, and variously shaded 
red-colored stripes, which, rising in continually widening strata, 
become gradually of a deeper red, and finally pass, distinctly, 
into the red sandstone, retaining this character through the 
remaining superposition of the strata. This red sandstone con- 
sists of minute grains of siliceous and calcareous matter, inter- 
spersed with spangles of mica. Attached to it are small beds of 
reddle, or red. chalk, usually occupying the spaces between 
approximate strata, and preventing their actual contact. This 
variety is comparatively soft, and more readily acted upon by 
external causes than the grey, which has a much coarser, and by 
no means so uniform a texture. Both effervesce briskly in nitric 
acid, but the grey contains a greater portion of the calcareous 
ingredient. This sandstone does not contain veins of gypsum or 
limestone. In fact, the reddle was the only simple mineral which 
we observed in it. The entire precipice, from the feeble cohe- 
sion of its parts, is rapidly acted upon by the ordinary causes of 
decay; large masses are almost continually losing their hold 
above, and adding new matter to the slope of débris, which 
inclines from its base into the sea. . 
On the road to Digby, about three miles from “ the sea-wall,” 
we met with an interesting deposit of magnetic iron ore, although 
it did not prove to be a very extensive one. A collection of 
masses, in all about twenty tons, were found lying in the soil, and 
confined to a very narrow space on the south side of Nichols’ 
mountain. The rock, in which they originally occurred, and 
which, by its decay, had left them disconnected, is amygdaloid of 
