BEENARDSTON SERIES OF UPPER DEVONIAN. 275 



quartzite into fine, micaceous quartzite, and this into fiat argillite witli 

 minute transverse biotites. The wliole is well exjjosed and plainly con- 

 formable. Its dip increases from 22° at the south end to 45° at the north 

 end, where the upper portion of the bed has this high dip, while the lower 

 jjortion runs up on the argillite with the low dip of 20°. It thus folds 

 around and dips away from a great promontory of the argillite; and it is 

 blackened in many places by a remnant of the argillitic material. 



All this is well exposed just north of the last house before the State 

 line is reached (at M. Merrill's), and the argillite where it is nipped by the 

 sharply bending quartzite is greatly crushed and filled with quartz combs. 

 This boundary crosses the next road north — the old Bernardston-Vernon 

 road — at a small abandoned house (two houses below the schoolhouse) 

 where the brook comes nearest the road. Just behind this house, in the 

 side of the brook, is exposed a most interesting junction of the conglomerate 

 upon the argillite. Commencing at a ruined dam perhaps 15 rods from the 

 house, we find typical argillite, which changes through a few feet of 

 spangled schist into thin-fissile, black, muscovite-quartzite with some thicker, 

 highly crystalline layers, and this grades into a highly muscovitic, very 

 vitreous quartzite, which is at one place a conglomerate of rounded (piai-tz 

 pebbles 2 to 4 inches long. This is where the water falls over a reef 3 to 

 4 feet high, 2 rods below a wooden bi'idge. Immediately below is a bed of 

 heavy hornblende rock, massive, in places showing a reticulated structure. 

 Masses of this rock built into the piers of a wrecked bridge just behind the 

 house show pebbles and contain also much green mica, often quite coarse; 

 it resembles the more gneissoid rock found over the South Vernon plain to 

 the river, and classed by Professor Hitchcock as Bethlehem gneiss. The 

 series strikes N. 55° W. and dips 45° E. The outcrop is continuous and 

 shows a gradual passage through a spangled argillite and fine-grained 

 quartzite into conglomerate, often coarsely garnetiferous, the change being 

 eftected within 50 feet and showing no trace of unconformity. Many 

 masses of a thin-fissile, pyritous magnetite occiu- here, but the bed could 

 not be found in place. The magnetite, green mica, and hornblende rock 

 suggest a repetition in the quartzite of a limestone band, perhaps on the 

 same horizon as the Williams farm bed. 



East of the bomidary line just described, across Vernon to the river, 

 the whole area is underlain by the basal quartzite except where the West 



