NOVEMBEK 30, 1917] 



SCIENCE 



541 



hundred yards above the old ' Point House.' " 

 It is also reported as underlying the " Mahon- 

 ing " sandstone. Meek's list of fossils includes 

 7 brachiopoda, 13 pelecypoda, 10 gastropoda, 

 2 cephalopoda, a trilobite and a erinoid, be- 

 sides crinoid columns. Three new species of 

 pelecypoda were described; namely, Nucula 

 anodontoides, Yoldia carbonaria and Y. stev- 

 ensoni. Stevenson informed I. C. White that 

 most of his fossils were collected at the town 

 of Uffington.s 



White in 1903 described the Uffington shale 

 at Uffington and reported Stevenson's fossils 

 as found in it, thus describing it as bearing 

 both plant and animal remains.^ 



Stevenson in 1906 repeats White's statement 

 that the Uffington shale — which name he now 

 employs for the first time — bears a marine 

 fauna.° 



Hennen in 1913 mapped the outcrop of the 

 Upper Freeport coal of the area and described 

 the Uffington shale,^ but did not observe ani- 

 mal fossils in it." 



After a close examination of the area the 

 following facts bearing on the location of the 

 marine fossils have come to light, correlation 

 and identification of strata being based on the 

 work of White and Hennen: 



At Uffington the Uffington shale is 30 feet 

 thick, plant-bearing throughout and very 

 sandy in the lower half. Above it lie in as- 

 cending order the Mahoning sandstone, 39 

 feet thick, clay-shales 20 feet in thickness, the 

 Brush Creek coal, 6 inches thick, and 3 feel 

 of dark shale of the Brush Creek limestone 

 horizon containing abundant marine fossils. 

 Above the latter is the Buffalo sandstone, 16 

 feet thick. 



At Rock Forge, 4 miles east of Uffington, 

 stands the old " Point House," a frame dwell- 

 ing, a relic of the settlement built during the 

 operation of the Deckers Creek Iron Works 



3 I. C. White, oral communioation. 



* W. Va. Geol. Surv., Vol. II., p. 323. 



'"Carboniferous of the Appalachian Basin," 

 Geol. Soc, America Bull., Vol. 17. 1906, p. 132. 



E. V. Hennen, West Virginia Geol. Surv., Ee- 

 port on Monongalia, Marion and Taylor counties, 

 p. 321. 



7 Oral communication. 



which has been inactive since about 1855. 

 Here the " bluff " referred to by Stevenson is 

 capped by the Buffalo sandstone overlying 13 

 feet of dark shale containing abundant marine 

 invertebrate fossils, the Brush Creek limestone 

 horizon, which is just above the level of 

 Deckers Creek. The strata at this point dip 

 to the west, and seven tenths of a mile to the 

 northeast the Upper Freeport coal rises to the 

 creek level with the Mahoning sandstone rest- 

 ing directly upon it, no shales intervening be- 

 tween them. 



It is thus seen that the dark fossiliferous 

 shale of Stevenson at Rock Forge is Brush 

 Creek. It was found to contain a number of 

 the species listed by Meek. 



Stevenson's description of his fossil bed 

 does not agree with the characters of the 

 Uffington shale at Uffington. It is less than 

 one third as thick — the shales do not thin 

 down in the immediate vicinity of the town- 

 no sandy shale is reported and the strikingly 

 abundant plant remains are not noted, nor 

 does another fossiliferous stratum of black 

 shale appear in the section below the 

 well-marked Ames limestone, with which 

 neither of the strata under discussion could 

 have been confounded.''^ It is therefore 

 concluded that Stevenson collected marine 

 fossils from the Brush Creek and not 

 from the Uffington and it appears that at the 

 time of writing he correlated the coal which 

 lies below the true Uffington with the " Kit- 

 tanning." This coal he mentions as seen at 

 low water in the Monongahela River between 

 Morgantown and Uffington and is the Upper 

 Freeport of White and Hennen. It is there- 

 fore apparent that Stevenson's " Upper Free- 

 port " is a higher coal. From these considera- 

 tions it seems that there is little doubt that 

 the Brush Creek coal and fossiliferous shale 

 are Stevenson's " Upper Freeport coal " and 

 " Dark shale just below the Mahoning sand- 

 stone," respectively. Diligent search by the 

 writer failed to reveal marine fossils in the 

 Uffington shale, while a number of Meek's ' 



7i A sparse marine fauna is occasionally found 

 in the green and yellow shales of the Pine Creek 

 limestone horizon above the Buffalo sandstone. 



