398 REMARKABLE FOSSIL RELICKS 



So, on the bank of York river, the same observer, while 

 walking on the sand beach, noticed, in the high cliff or 

 bank above him, strata of sea shells not yet decomposed, 

 of the same kind as those which lay on the beach under 

 his feet, interposed with strata ofea^rth, showing at once 

 the comparatively recent retreat of the water, and the 

 subsequent action of the inland floods, and of the winds, 

 to accumulate soil in that place. 



Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Esq. has surveyed 4he ma- 

 ritime parts of Virginia, from Aquia creek to Cape Hen- 

 ry, with the eye and the mind of a geologist. His pub- 

 lication on the sand hills and sand quarries in that re- 

 gion, abound with interesting fact and argument. He 

 found carbonated wood with loose stone to underlay the 

 strata of Potomac-sandstone. The wood mixed with 

 the stone near James's river, appeared to him less carbo- 

 nated than on the Potomac and Rappahannock. In the 

 vicinity of the latter river, at Mansfield below Frede- 

 ricksburg, the largest mass of timber he had seen, lies be- 

 low the freestone. 



The Virginia sandstone does not merely rest upon 

 vegetable relicks. It is penetrated by them. To the 

 component parts of the stone, such as sand, clay, pebbles, 

 pyrites, nodules of iron-ore, oxyd of iron and native 

 alum, are added organic remains. Wood of all sizes, 

 from the trunks and branches of trees to small twigs, ra- 

 mifies throughout the strata. Sometimes it is entirely 

 carboned ; or the wood is carbonated and the bark in 

 a fibrous state, so as to have a net-like appearance, with 

 a considerable degree of tenacity; or the bark is fibrous, 

 and the wood in a state quite friable; or the wood re- 

 placed by a pyrites which undergoes decomposition by 

 exposure to the atmosphere ; and some other forms. 



