SHORES OF NORTHUMBERLAND STRAIT. 215 



Feet. 



Gray sandstone and shales with some reddish beds. One of the 

 gray sandstones is filled with trunks and branches of fossil 

 trees, fossihzed by carbonate of lime, and showing under 

 the microscope a very perfect structure of the Araucarian 

 type about 150 



Here we have, on a small scale, some of the principal features of the 

 Lower Carboniferous series, associated with vegetable remains similar 

 to those found usually at a much higher level in the Carboniferous 

 system. The beds at this place dip S. S.W. 20° ; but a little farther 

 to the north there are sandstones and conglomerates, also of the 

 Carboniferous series, dipping to the N.E. 



Proceeding along the coast to the north-east, we find the gray 

 sandstones containing fossil trees and thrown quite on edge. As the 

 strike of the beds corresponds nearly with that of the shore, large 

 surfaces sometimes stand up along the face of the cliff like walls, and 

 on these are distinct ripple-marks and worm-tracks, produced when 

 the sandstones were beds of incoherent sand, but now, in consequence 

 of the hardening and disturbance of the sandstone, forming sculptures 

 on a vertical wall. A little further on, the same beds are seen dipping 

 to the north at an angle of 45°, and containing abundance of fossil 

 wood and some Calamites. A portion of the shore is then occupied 

 by a salt marsh, and beyond this we have a considerable series of coal 

 measure beds at the extremity of Cape Malagash, dipping south at au 

 angle of 40°. Cape Malagash, as before stated, thus appears to be in 

 the line of a subordinate anticlinal, ridging up the Coal formation rocks, 

 but not, like the more important anticlinal to the northward, bringing 

 up the Lower Carboniferous series. That the reader may have an 

 opportunity of comparing these beds with those of the Joggins, at the 

 other extremity of the same coal-field, and sixty miles distant, I shall 

 give a section of them in descending order. 



^ ^ _ Feet. 



Brownish red sandstones and shales alternating with gray sand- 

 stones, one of them containing pebbles of white quartz, about 600 

 Dark gray limestone ........ 2 



Gray and reddish sandstones ....... 50 



Dark gray limestone ........ 3 



Gray sandstones ......... 50 



Reddish sandstones and shales . . . .not well seen. 



Gray arenaceous shale. Fern leaves, and Cordaites ... 6 

 Underclay with Stigmaria^ and an erect stump with Stigniaria 

 roots, penetrating bed above ...... 3 



