SECOND ORDINARY MEETING. 19 



Prof. Ch. H. Hitchcock, in 1860, have clearly established the fact 

 that there extends from the vicinity of Worcester, Mass., to the 

 southern extremity of Rhode Island, a more or less broken belt of 

 rocks of Carboniferous age ; and these writers all concur in describing 

 these rocks as materially different from those of the best known coal 

 fields. Instead of Bituminous coal or of Anthracite, we find there 

 a plumbaginous Anthracite ; instead of the accompanying clays and 

 clay-slates, we find clay-slates and Mica-schists. The southern portion 

 of the belt, at least, is traversed by numerous Quartz veins, and all 

 the rocks and minerals of the region indicate vaiying degrees of 

 metamorphism. During the last few years the writer has devoted 

 considerable time to the construction of a geological map of the 

 vicinity of Newport, R. I., and of a geological section across the 

 entire basin, which at that point measures some fifteen miles in 

 width. Since the publication of the I'esults of this work, in extend- 

 ing during last summer the observations northwards, I came upon a 

 locality where the metamorphism of the coal-measures had proceeded 

 further than it is supposed to have done even in that region. The 

 object of this paper is to give a brief statement of these observations. 



[In order, however, to show their general bearing the following condensed 

 summary of the writer's former papers on the stratigraphy of the vicinity of 

 Newport is here given.* On either side of the basin we have areas of 

 Protogine and Gneiss (A), and in the centre two isolated masses of stratified 

 Protogine. Closely allied to this we have on the west side of the basin a long 

 strip of Mica-schist (B), some of which contains rounded quartz pebbles, and 

 is traversed both horizontally and vertically by veins of Granite. Not far 

 from the juncture of the Gneiss and Mica-schist is a bed of granular Plumbago. 

 A and B may be of Montalban or even of Huronian age. Then follow certain 

 beds of Hornblende, Chlorite and Mica-schist (C), and of Epidote and 

 Chlorite-schist (D), which may be synchronous. A series of strata similar to 

 C, and probably of Silurian age, occurs in Connecticut. + 



The next series (E) consists of Ohloritic Argillytes with passages of Calcite, 

 nodules of Jasper and some thick layers of Dolomite. Its age is doubtful. 



* A contribution to tlie Geology of Rhode Island. Proceedings of the Boston Society of 

 Natural History, Vol. XXII., Jan. 3rd., 1883. A contribution to the Geology of Rhode Island. 

 American Journal of Science, Vol. XXVII., March and April, 1884. (In the Section on PI. 

 VI. of this paper the unconformity between the Coal-measures and the Protogine should 

 probably have been represented rather as a thinning out of the Coal-measures in contact with 

 Protogine beds of originally conformable stratification.) Remarks on some of the evidences of 

 Geological disturbance in the vicinity of Newport. Proceedings of the Newport Natural 

 History Society, 1883-4. 



+ See James D. Dana, On Rocks of Helderberg Era in the Valley of the Connecticut, etc. 

 American Journal of Scienee, Vol. VL, p. 339, 1873. 



