APPENDIX. X 



shale and coaly matter already mentioned ; but I am inclined to 

 think it very nearly, if not exactly at the same geological horizon, 

 as the dip of the strata would apparently bring those seams down 

 to this level. The direction of the cut being more nearly par- 

 allel with the strike of the strata than the general course of the 

 road west of this curve, the beds dip more obliquely across the 

 excavation, and at the point where the laborers were at work 

 when I was there, a thin seam of black, more or less shaly matter, 

 containing at places a few inches of coal, was seen passing across 

 the bottom of the cut. This seam of bituminous shaly matter is 

 very irregular in thickuess, being in some places a foot or more 

 thick, but soon thinning out to a few inches. The included coal 

 is also even more irregular, being sometimes several inches in 

 thickness, and again thinning to a mere streak of black bitu- 

 minous shaly matter, or sometimes entirely disappearing. Where 

 pure and not crushed,* it often presents a somewhat lustrous 

 appearance like anthracite, but it burns with a bright flame that 

 shows it to be bituminous or semi-bituminous. Of course it 

 does not exist in sufficient quantities to be made available for any 

 practical purposes, but its occurrence here among these older 

 strata, so far beneath the horizon of the true Coal measures, and 

 in connection with so many beautiful fossil plants, is, to the geo- 

 logist, an interesting fact, as it shows that similar physical con- 

 ditions to those that gave origin to our great widely extended 

 coal-beds of the later Carboniferous period, prevailed locally 

 here, at least for a comparatively brief period of time, long 

 before the true coal-producing epoch. 



The plants found associated with this coal occur both in the 

 more or less dark-colored shaly matter, and in the fine-grained 

 argillaceous and slightly gritty harder rock just below it, as well 

 as above. The wonderfully perfect condition of the most deli- 

 cate fronds of the ferns found here, shows that these plants could 

 not have been drifted any great distance, by streams or ocean 

 currents, before being buried beneath the fine sediment now form- 

 ing the rocks in which they are imbedded, but that they must 

 have grown at least near the locality where they are now found. 

 Hence it is evident that while the vast accumulations of sedi- 

 mentary matter composing these mountain masses, were being 

 deposited upon a gradually sinking ocean bottom, there were 

 shores, and perhaps islands near, that supported a growth of 

 terrestrial vegetation. Indeed it is probable that even at some 

 of the very spots where the coal is found, the bed upon which it 

 rests was raised slightly above the surface of the sea, and that 

 most of the plants of which the coal is formed, as well as those 

 with which it is associated, may have grown very nearly, or pos- 



* Being a much softer material than the hard rocks above and below, 

 this seam of coal and shaly matter has, at some places, been crashed by 

 the movements of the beds under tremendous pressure. 



(35) 



