CARBONIFEROUS DISTRICT OF CUMBERLAND. 155 



they have in many places been worn down nearly to the level of the 

 beach, so that they cannot be very distinctly observed. Fortunately, 

 however, just where the section becomes most interesting, the beds 

 rise into a high cliff; and every one can be measured, and its mineral 

 character and fossil contents observed, by any person who is content 

 to labour diligently, and who is not too apprehensive that he may be 

 buried under the falling cliffs, which, especially in the spring and in 

 stormy weather, often send down very threatening showers of stones, 

 and sometimes terrible landslips. This portion of the section, then, I 

 shall give in detail, as one of the best specimens in the world of that 

 wonderful series of fossiliferous beds constituting the great coal 

 measures of the Carboniferous period ; but before doing so we may 

 complete this general view of the coast section. 



Proceeding along the coast from the Joggins Mines, we find, toward 

 Ragged Reef, coal measures still exposed, but with fewer and thinner 

 beds of coal. At Ragged Reef there are again very important and 

 valuable beds of grindstone. Beyond this all the way to Shoulie 

 River, the coast shows sandstones and shales belonging to the Upper 

 Coal Formation. In this we no longer find beds of coal ; red sandstones 

 and shales become more abundant, and the gray sandstones become 

 coarse and pebbly, holding rounded fragments of quartz and syenite 

 similar to that of the Cobequid Mountains. Fossils are not abundant ; 

 but Calamites, Stigmaria, Lepidodendra, and large petrified trunks 

 of the pine trees of the coal formation, still appear. The general 

 aspect of these beds is, to a great extent, similar to that of the Mill- 

 stone grit series, and this upper mass of barren coal measures may 

 perhaps be defined to be the weight laid upon the coals to press them 

 into the required consistency. The whole coal formation and its 

 accompaniments may thus be compared to a huge botanical drying 

 press. The millstone-grit is the lower board ; the true coal measures 

 represent the plants laid out between leaves of clay and sand instead 

 of paper, and the Upper Coal Formation is the upper board and weight. 



Toward Shoulie River the dip of the beds diminishes to 5°, and 

 beyond this little stream, which seems to be in the middle of the 

 synclinal, the dips change to N. E. (North 10° E. was observed on the 

 bank of the river), and the beds are repeated with these north-easterly 

 dips, until at Apple River they finally rest against those old rocks of 

 Cape Chieguccto, which form the limit of the Cumberland trough in 

 this direction. I have not visited Apple River; but from Mr Donald 

 Eraser, an explorer who visited this place under my direction, I learn 

 that at Mill Brook, south-east of Apple River, there is a bed of coal 

 one inch in thickness, and dipping to the north at a small angle. It 



