177 



are about nineteen seams of coal, the most considerable being four feet 

 thick. The place where these are best seen is called the South 

 Joggins, where the cliffs are from 150 to 200 feet high, forming the 

 southern shore of a branch of the Bay of Fundy, called Chignecto 

 Bay. The action of the tides, which rise sixty feet, exposes con- 

 tinually a fresh section, and every year different sets of trees are 

 seen in the face of the cliffs. 



The beds with which the coal and erect trees are associated are 

 not interrupted by faults. They are more than 2000 feet thick, and 

 range for nearly two miles along the coast. Immediately below them 

 are blue grits used for grindstones, after which there is a break iu 

 the section for three miles, when there appear near Minudie beds of 

 gypsum and limestone, and at that village a deep red sandstone, the 

 whole having the same southerly dip as the coal at the Joggins, and 

 being considered by Mr. Lyell as the older member of the carbo- 

 niferous series. 



Above the coal-bearing beds, and stretching southwards for many 

 miles continuously along the shore, are grits and shales of prodigious 

 thickness, with coal-plants, but without vertical trees. 



Mr. Lyell next describes in detail the position and structure of 

 the upright trees at the South Joggins. He states that no part of 

 the original tree is preserved except the bark, which is marked ex- 

 ternally with irregular longitudinal ridges and furrows, without any 

 leaf-scars, precisely resembling in this respect the vertical trees 

 found at Dixonfold on the Bolton Railway, described by Messrs. 

 Hawkshaw and Bowman. No trace of structure could be detected 

 in the internal cylinder of the fossil trunks, which are now filled 

 with sandstone and shale, through which fern-leaves and other plants 

 are scattered. Mr. Lyell saw seventeen vertical trees, varying in 

 height from six to twenty feet, and from fourteen inches to four 

 feet in diameter. The beds which inclose the fossil trees are usually 

 separated from each other by masses of shale and sandstone many 

 yards in thickness. The trunks of the trees, which ai'e all broken 

 off abruptly at the top, extend through different strata, but were 

 never seen to penetrate a seam of coal, however thin. They all end 

 downwards either in beds of coal or shale, no instance occurring of 

 their termination in sandstone. Sometimes the strata of shale, 

 sandstone and clay, with which the fossil trunks have been filled, 

 are much more numerous than the beds which they traverse. In 

 one case nine distinct deposits were seen in the interior of a tree, 

 while only three occurred on the outside in the same vertical height. 

 Immediately above the uppermost coal-seams and vertical trees 

 are two strata, probably of freshwater origin, of black calcareo- 

 bituminous shale, chiefly made up of compressed shells of two 

 species of Modiola, and two kinds of Cypris. 



Stigmarice are abundant in the clays and argillaceous sandstones; 

 often with their leaves attached, and spreading regularly in all direc- 

 tions from the stem. The other plants dispersed through the shales 

 and sandstones bear a striking resemblance to those of the European 

 coal fields. Among these are Pecopteris lonchitica, Neuropteris 



