LOWER CARBONIFEROUS OF NEW BRUNSWICK. 231 



2. The Lower Carboniferous Coal Formation in New Brunswick. 



This remarkable group of rocks, which docs not appear, so far as 

 known, in the coal area of Cumberland, though it is developed in other 

 parts of Nova Scotia, appears in New Brunswick to be of considerable 

 thickness, and can be traced from the neighbourhood of Dorchester for 

 some distance along the north side of the coast range of metamorphic 

 hills. It is characterized by the same species of fossil plants as at 

 llorton Bluff in Nova Scotia, and, like the beds at that })lace, these 

 are rich iu remains of fishes. They differ, however, from the rocks of 

 similar age in Nova Scotia by the remarkable development of highly 

 bituminous shales in connexion with considerable deposits of an 

 asphaltic mineral, to which the name "Albertite" has been given, 

 and which is highly valued as a material for the manufacture of coal 

 oil and illuminating gas. I examined these deposits in 1852, in the 

 company of Sir Charles Lyell, and shall first give, without any 

 material alteration, the account of the locality as I then saw it, and 

 as it was described in the first edition of this work, adding a sum- 

 mary of more recent observations, and the new conclusions to which 

 they lead. 



Albert Mine, Hillsborough. — The beds at this place are thin-bedded 

 shales, composed of extremely fine indurated clay with much bitu- 

 minous matter. Some of them contain much lime, and when this is 

 dissolved away by the weather or by an acid, the bituminous matter 

 remains in the form of light porous flakes, resembling half-decayed 

 bark. These shales contain great numbers of fossil fishes in a remark- 

 ably perfect state. They are flattened by pressure ; but their forms 

 are perfectly preserved, and the fins are as perfect as they were in life. 

 They belong to the genus Palceoyiiscus, and are probably identical 

 with some of those in the Coal formation of Nova Scotia (Fig. 62 \ 



Fig. 62. — Palcconiscua Albert I (?) — Jackson. 



but they have been buried in such a manner that every scale is In its 

 place, instead of being scattered about, as at the Jogglns and in the 



