CARBONIFEROUS DISTRICT OF PICTOU. 323 



quid range of hills, crossing tlie mouth of an indentation in the meta- 

 morphic district, which in tlic older part of the Carboniferous period 

 must have been a bay or arm of the sea, exposed to an open expanse 

 of water lying to the northward. 2. The conglomerate camiot be 

 traced to the margin of the mctamorphic country, except at its ex- 

 tremities ; so that in all probability it never extended over the low 

 Carboniferous district included within its line of outcrop. This is the 

 more remarkable, inasmuch as the conglomerate has evidently resisted 

 denudation better than any of the associated beds. 3. The conglomerate 

 is full of false stratification and wedge-shaped beds of reddish sand- 

 stone in the manner of ordinary gravel-ridges, and it even presents 

 the appearance of passing into sandstone toward the dip, as if the coarse 

 conglomerate were limited to the vicinity of the outcrop. 4. In the 

 sandstone overlying the Albion measures, as well as in portions of the 

 Coal formation manifestly overlying the great conglomerate, there are 

 small seams of coal corresponding in their characters with those of the 

 Joggins and Sydney, where no similar conglomerate occurs. 5. The 

 supposition that the Albion coal was formed in a depressed space, 

 separated by a shingle-bar from the more exposed flats without, 

 accounts for the great thickness of the deposits of coal and carbonaceous 

 shale, the comparative absence of sandstones, and the peculiar texture 

 and qualities of the coal, as well as the association with it of remains 

 of fish and Cypris ; since modern analogies show that such an enclosed 

 space might be alternately a swamp and lagoon without any marked 

 change in the nature of the mechanical deposits. 6. Movements of 

 depression causing the rupture of the barrier, or enabling the sea to 

 overflow it, and perhaps also admitting currents of oceanic water 

 through the valleys of the metamorphic district to the southward, 

 would sufficiently account for the overlying sandstones, as well as for 

 the denudation of the Coal measures supposed to have preceded the 

 accumulation of these sandstones.* 7. The dislocation extending 

 along the outcrop of the conglomerate is easily explained by the sup- 

 position that, in later elevatory movements, this hard and strong bed 

 determined the direction of fracture of the deposits. 



" To these reasons I may add, that if in the Carboniferous as in the 

 modern period, westerly winds prevailed in this latitude, it would be 

 very natural that a beach should be thrown out from the eastern end 

 of the Cobcquid range across the bay to the eastward, in which the 

 Albion Coal measures are situated." 



In the supplementary chapter (1860), after referring to some 



* These samlstoiics overlie the Coal ineasiivcs near the Albion Mines, but with dip 

 to the N. 



