372 GEOLOGY OF THE NARKAGANSETT BASIN. 



shales are frequently carbonaceous or coaly. Exposures beneath the 

 Miantonorny Hill conglomerate are few and do not resemble very closely 

 the lower part of the Newport Cliff section. There is no probability of 

 a considerable amount of medium-pebbled conglomerate underlying the 

 coarser bed at Miantonomy Hill, so that the Newport Cliff section appears 

 very much richer in conglomerate layers in that part of the section which 

 immediately underlies the coarser conglomerates. 



If the coarse conglomerates of the Newport Cliff section be compared 

 with the Purgatory conglomerate, then the underlying medium-pebbled 

 conglomerates toward the "Forty Steps" and the western end of Eastons 

 Beach must correspond to the medium-pebbled conglomerate layers of 

 much smaller thickness beneath the Purgatory conglomerate at Eastons 

 Point. In other words, the Sakonnet sandstones of Black Point, along the 

 Sakonnet River, would be represented at (1) Eastons Point by a few con- 

 glomerate layers with medium-sized pebbles scattered rather irregularly 

 among the much more abundant shales and sandstones, and at (2) the Newport 

 Cliffs by a greater quantity of conglomerate in a section of greater thickness. 



The real difficulty in the way of a satisfactory interpretation of the 

 geological position of the Newport Cliff exposures is the paucity of outcrops 

 between these cliffs and Miantonomy Hill, or between the cliffs and Eastons 

 Point. Too little is also known of the rocks underlying Newport. It may 

 be that others, who resided in Newport at the time the various sewers were 

 constructed, have the necessary information, but all that the writer could 

 learn was insufficient to determine the correlation of the beds. The 

 writer's experience is that isolated exposures of small area are very unsafe 

 for the determination of horizons where the lithological character of the 

 rocks change so often as they do, for instance, at the Newport Cliffs. Con- 

 tinuous sections are needed. Until further evidence is secured the writer 

 prefers to consider the Newport Cliff section the equivalent of the Mian- 

 tonomy Hill and the Eastons Point sections in the sense described above. 



Prof. T. Nelson Dale mentions that coal seams were struck in digging- 

 wells under the city of Newport. Coal seams formerly outcropped near 

 Sheep Point, on the cliffs. Coal plants have been found near the corner of 

 Marlborough and Farewell streets. 1 In his published sections he places coaly 



1 In a sewer tunnel made nearly ten years ago, between Bellevue avenue and the first avenue 

 parallel to it on the east, and not far north of Ochre Point, Carbonaceous shale formed the rock 

 exposure. It was examined by Professor Dale. 



