3 
2 
356 C.S. Hale on the Geology4 
nexion with the overlying sand a cent clay bed. Its 
thickess here amounts to four fee he color is dull black, tex- 
ture compact with occasional thin fibrous laminations, structure 
massive, sometimes fragmentary; it burns without swelling or 
caking, mg abounds with sulphate of iron both crystallized “and 
amorphou 
Want of leisure has prevented a suitable examination of its 
organic remains. The vegetable part however furnishes decided 
evidence of its intertropical character. Between our two ape 
pal water courses this deposit of lignite lines the bottom at 
sides of the streams through a zone ten or fifteen miles in width 
It occurs in a western direction in Pigeon creek on the border 
the state of Mississippi, near the northern limits of Washington 
county. It is found also at Natchitoches on Red river, where 
.* underlying bed eonsists of a grayish plastic: clay, very adhe- 
sive ; on Bedia’s creek near the Trinity river, Texas; at Robin’s 
ferry on the Brazos; and at Bastrop on the Co lorado. At all 
these places the lignite occupies the same relative position in the 
series, and is probably continuous vag the whole of this ex- 
arking the former coast 
he greensand deposit, No. 3, already noticed as partially de- 
veloped at the base of Claiborne bluff, passes insensibly into No. 
- A, an argillaceous muddy deposit above, with a thickness varying 
gf from 
vet 
m fifteen to twenty feet. The fossils of this bed are limited 
almost exclusively to the Ostrea genus ; the only exceptions ap- 
pear to be the Cardita planicosta, two or three species of Turri- 
tella and an Arca. The stratum No. 4, also makes its appearance 
at Coffeeville landing on the Tombecbee, where it exhibits the 
same identical fossiliferous character. 
here occur here however a new species of 'Turbinolia, resem- 
bling very much the enc eons ochracea of Lamouroux— 
two = three new species of Lonsdale’s new genus Endopachys, 
a new species of Lunulite. This stratum may also be seen 
t Bell’s landing on the Alabama, where its thickness amounts to 
feet. At the bottom of this cliff with the Ostrea common 
Whe stratum, I found the Cardita planicosta of very large di- 
mensions 
The riéxt in the ascending series is a limestone deposit with 
sandy and argillaceous ingredients variously “intermixed. ‘The 
few species it contains are common also in the other beds,’ and 
probably were introduced here in some adventitious way. I have 
not been able to discover this deposit anywhere else except in 
the Claiborne section 
To this limestone deposit, another clay bed, No. 6, succeeds, 
being about twenty feet in thickness. It is remarkable for noth- 
ing else but a band of oysters of the selliform species, all © 
which are of a mature size, and probably lived on the spot. ‘This 
re 
Mis 
