218 THE CAKBONIFEKOUS SYSTEM. 



shore. On a subsequent examination of the same place, I found a 

 series of footmarks of another animal, and obtained a slab with casts 

 of eight impressions, which I send with this paper. In this specimen 

 the tracks are somewhat injured by the rain-marks which cover the 

 slab, and the clay in whicli they were made was probably too soft to 

 give good impressions ; it has, however, preserved a furrow which 

 must have been caused by the body or tail of the animal trailing over 

 it. Many of the beds in the neighbourhood of that containing these 

 footmarks are rippled, rain-marked, or covered with worm-tracks; 

 and as such indications of a littoral origin are not infrequent in other 

 parts of the Newer Coal formation, it may be anticipated that many 

 interesting relics of terrestrial animals will in future be discovered. 

 At present, however, as no quarrying operations are carried on in the 

 red beds, it is difficult to obtain access to the surfaces on which tracks 

 might be expected to occur. The only vegetable remains found in 

 the red sandstones of Tatamagouche are some of those irregular 

 branching stains which have been considered as fucoidal marks ; but 

 in a bed of gray sandstone above the strata containing tracks, I found 

 Calamites, Endogenites, St/gmaria fcoides, and fragments of carbonized 

 wood. In a fragment from a dark calcareous bed near this place, I 

 found a portion of a fossil plant covered with shells of a species of 

 Spirorbis, and a few small scales of ganoid fishes." 



It will be observed that rain-marks are mentioned as found with 

 these footsteps, and I have now in my collection specimens from this 

 place, I believe the first ever observed in the Carboniferous system ; 

 though much finer specimens were found shortly afterwards by Mr 

 Brown at Sydney, and described by him and by Sir C. Lyell. 



In the French River section, the northerly dips of the Coal measures 

 increase in approaching the hills, the lowest beds dipping at an angle 

 of 30°. Not far from the base of the hills, there is a small bed of coal, 

 with some gray shales and sandstones and a thin bed of limestone. 



Useful Minerals of the Cumberland Coal-field. 



Coal. — The principal deposit of this mineral now worked in Cum- 

 berland is the Jogglns main seam, consisting of two beds, three feet 

 six inches and one foot six inches thick, with a clay parting between, 

 varying from one foot to a few inches. It is a free-burning bitumin- 

 ous coal of fair quality. It is extracted by two shafts worked by 

 horse-gins, and tlie coal is carried to the loading pier by a railway 

 incline. The mine is drained by a level run out to the shore, and 

 consequently is not w^orked below the level of high tide. The 



