Miscellanies. ■ 191 



try full of conveniences and comforts, we are sorry to learn, that 

 " the appropriation for the past year has not been sufficient to 

 cover the travelling expences of those engaged in these arduous 

 duties." This ought not so to be, and if we had cause, on a for- 

 mer occasion, to enter our protest against the narrow provision 

 made for a similar duty in the most powerful and opulent State 

 in the Union, we need not so much wonder at the caution of a 

 young State, which however, we trust will prove by an enlarged 

 appropriation, that she is not behind in liberality and justice, es- 

 pecially where they are so well deserved as in the present instance. 



The rocks of the peninsula of Michigan consist, " for the most 

 part, of nearly horizontal strata of limestones, sandstone, and 

 shales, giving character to a beautifully varied succession of hills 

 and valleys, as also to a soil admirably adapted to agriculture." 

 That part of the State bordering on Lake Superior, presents occa- 

 sionally primary and trap rocks, forming mountain chains, with 

 strong marks of disturbance since the deposition of the red sand- 

 stone. 



The divisions of his subject, stated by Dr. Houghton, are as 

 follows : — Upper sandstone of the peninsula ; gray limestone ; 

 lower sandstone, or grauwacke group ; coal ; gypsum ; brine 

 springs ; clay ; sand ; bog iron ore ; mineral springs. The sand- 

 stone belongs to the carboniferous series ; the rocks appear to 

 have been shattered, as if by convulsions, their ruins forming 

 deep loose masses, and being mixed with the soil. Shale is 

 found mixed with fragments of coal, and occasionally containing 

 thin seams of it. 



In the counties of Ingham and Eaton there are thin beds of 

 coal from half an inch to three inches, and even one foot in thick- 

 ness, and near Corunna were seen numerous indistinct impres- 

 sions of plants, with small pieces of coal, retaining the ligniform 

 structure, but perfectly carbonized. Loose pieces of coal are 

 found quite universally in excavating around most of the coun- 

 ties bounding the coal formation ; and on Grindstone creek there 

 is found a bed, having an average thickness of eighteen inches, 

 and not exceeding two feet at any point. It is expected that a 

 canal will cross the coal formation at a point where there is rea- 

 son to hope that beds of coal will be brought to light. In the 

 carboniferous limestone underlying the coal, are found sulphate 

 of strontia and sulphate of baryta, brown spar, hog-tooth spar, 



