36 THE PERMQ-CARBONIFEROUS. 



beds and underelays, and clays with nodular limestone. These may be 

 regarded as belonging to the Upper Coal formation; and their aggre- 

 gate thickness as far as Pictou Harbour may be 2000 feet. They 

 contain Calamites, trunks of Dadoxylon materiarium, Lepidodendron, 

 Pecopterls arborescens t and Neuropteris. 



The dip of the conglomerate is high ; and that this is not alto- 

 gether due to false stratification is shown by the fact, that to the 

 eastward of New Glasgow the limestone and the Coal-measure beds 

 rest on the conglomerate at an angle of 45°; but this rapidly dimi- 

 nishes to 20°, and in the greater part of the section it is only from 8° 

 to 6°. 



The line of demarcation between the Middle and Upper Coal for- 

 mations is not marked here by any great physical break, but merely 

 by the cessation of the characteristic beds of the Middle Coal forma- 

 tion and the change to sandstones associated with red shales. 



At first sight it might appear that as the beds north of the con- 

 glomerate dip uniformly to the north, and mostly at slight angles, 

 and those south of its outcrop are much more disturbed, there might 

 be evidence of unconformability. This, however, is due to a line of 

 fault extending along the outcrop of the conglomerate, and to the 

 greater relative disturbance of the beds of the southern synclinal. 



Section West of Carribou Harbour. 



This section exposes the south side of the third or northern syn- 

 clinal, and may be supposed to begin not far above the base of the 

 Upper Coal formation. It extends in ascending order obliquely across 

 the synclinal for about ten miles, along a coast in which the beds arc 

 on the whole well exposed, with uniform dips of about N. 30° E. 

 magnetic, or nearly true north, and at an angle of about 10° ; and no 

 break or evidence of unconformability exists throughout the series, 

 which amounts here in thickness to about 2500 feet. 



The lowest beds seen in this section at the mouth of Carribou River 

 are red and gray shales, and gray, red, and brown sandstones, includ- 

 ing a small bed of coal 5 inches thick, with Stigmaria rootlets in 

 the underclay ; and at Carribou Island, nearly in the line of strike, 

 there is a somewhat thicker bed of coal. The overlying series may 

 be described as consisting of indefinite alternations of shales, mostly 

 deep red, with sandstones, gray, red, and brown, the latter sometimes 

 coarse and pebbly, and occasionally in thick massive beds. Several 

 of the beds of shale contain concretions of limestone, in one case 

 forming a nearly continuous bed, and with no fossils except a few casts 

 of a Cythere. In one of the lower beds of sandstone seen on Carribou 



