TRIAS OF PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND. 117 



the by-road to Orwell or Gallows Point, when the soil loses its bright 

 red colour, and assumes a grayish tint, and more argillaceous com- 

 position, indicating to the geological traveller a change in the com- 

 position of the rocks beneath. On reaching the extremity of the 

 Cape, a good section of a considerable variety of rocks may be seen. 

 Their dip is to the E. S. E. by compass (variation about 19 deg. W.), 

 at an angle of only 6 degrees; consequently in proceeding along the 

 shore to the westward, lower and older rocks appear cropping out 

 from beneath those which overlie them. Commencing with those 

 which are higher in order, red and brown sandstones, of soft and rather 

 coarse texture, occupy a considerable portion of the shore, projecting 

 in low reefs into the sea, and rising to the height of a few yards in a 

 water-worn clifi". Beneath these appear harder gray sandstones, 

 containing gray and brown impure limestone, in beds a few inches in 

 thickness. One of these beds contains a number of fragments of 

 fossil plants, in a very imperfect state of preservation. Beneath these 

 strata is a bed of sandstone, containing small nodules of red ochre, 

 and in one place the impression of a large fossil tree, whose wood 

 has disappeared, leaving a mould which has been filled with ochreous 

 clay. Proceeding in the same direction, we find beds of considerable 

 thickness consisting of gray and brown clay, apparently witliout coal 

 or fossils. Beneath these are several beds of brownish sandstone of 

 various qualities, one stratum appearing to be sufficiently hard for 

 building purposes. Embedded in one of these layers appear some 

 large fossil trees, one of them nearly three feet in diameter; they are 

 prostrate and much flattened by pressure, and the place once occupied 

 by their wood is now filled with a hard dark-coloured sillcious stone, 

 which, when polished in thin slices, and examined by the microscope, 

 dls[)lays the structure of the original wood. These trees appear to 

 have been partially decomposed before they were submitted to the 

 petrifying process, and the rents caused by decay are now filled with 

 red-coloured crystals of sulphate of barytes. In some of the 

 specimens the fissures arc coated with sillcious crystals, and portions 

 of some of the trunks consist of a soft carbonaceous ironstone retaining 

 the woody structure. These fossil trees carry back our thoughts to 

 a period when Prince Edward Island was a tract of submarine sand, 

 in which drift trees were embedded and preserved, and which has 

 since been indurated and partially elevatetl above the level of the sea. 

 In another of these sandstone beds are the remains of a large tree 

 compressed to the thickness of an inch, and converted into friable 

 shining coal, coloured In some places with green carbonate of copper. 

 These beds must belong cither to the very newest portions of the 



