130 In the Milk River Country 



the Belly River Age. The first two hundred feet 

 (speaking approximately, as I had no instru- 

 ments of precision), of the exposures are chiefly 

 clay, with oyster shells scattered through them; 

 also on top, quite a layer of oyster shells in a 

 yellowish sandstone, filled with iron. Just above 

 are two persistent layers of coal, or very black 

 bituminous shales. One vein, I concluded, must 

 have been between two and three feet thick. 

 There are places where this vein has been worked 

 by farmers, evidently, from the prairie above. As 

 the coal is seventy miles from the railway at 

 Medicine Hat, it is not likely anyone will be 

 found to work it extensively. Above the coal are 

 heavy strata of yellowish or grey clays, with 

 intervening beds of greyish and yellowish sands. 

 On the summit of the bad lands are huge concre- 

 tions, weighing many tons, each lying in yellow 

 sand. In this sand, too, I found the best pros- 

 pect for fossil bones I have seen in the region. 

 I found a perfect femur of a trachodont running 

 under one of these heavy concretions. Owing to 

 the fact that where there were no concretions, 

 the sand disintegrates so easily, grass and other 

 plants always take possession and cover the sand. 

 So if there are any skeletons here on Milk River 

 they are covered up. 



Above the coal veins for about three hundred 

 feet there are beds composed largely of mussels 

 and univalves, showing that great piles of them 

 were heaped in drifts along the ancient shore. 



