Mineralogy and Geology of Nova Scotia. 285 
lie between the strata and are much compressed. They do not 
injure the grindstones unless many occur in the mass, which 
seldom happens, as they are mostly scattered diffusely through 
the strata. The fossils which occur in this sandstone, stamp it 
as a secondary rock, although it is evidently older than the trap 
rocks recumbent on it along the margin of the Basin of Mines. 
A few miles southwest from the grindstone quarries at the 
South Joggin, a bed of bituminous coal exists in the sandstone, 
accompanied by shale. The bed is about five or six feet thick, 
and has been wrought to a small extent, but is now abandoned, 
and the shaft is filled with earth and rubbish. The coal contains 
an abundartce of pyrites, which injures its quality as fuel. In 
the vicinity of this bed occur several smaller beds, one of 
which is covered by a stratum of bluish compact limestone, 
in the upper surface of which Dr. Lincoln observed fragments of 
shells resembling those of the common muscle (Mytilus edulis ?). 
Many of the vegetable fossils so common in the rocks of the coal 
series in other countries are found in great abundance here, im- 
bedded in the sandstone, which dips at an angle of thirty degrees 
from the horizon, and includes the coal. Specimens of the phy- 
tolithus verrucosus were found by Dr. Lincoln, which exactly re- 
semble those represented in the drawings accompanying Mr. 
Steinhauer’s article on these fossils in the “ American Philosophi- 
cal Transactions.”* Very good specimens of the fossil represented 
in Parkinson’s “ Organic Remains,” (Vol. I. Pl. IX. fig. 1.) were 
also found. Substitutes of reeds and of plants resembling bamboos 
and rushes are likewise abundant. Some of the reeds are three 
or four inches in diameter and as many feet in length. They are 
* New Series, Vol. I. Plate IV. fig. 1, 2, and 4. 
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