22 BULLETIN: MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 



place, here covered by patches of coral reefs and there by fragments of 

 sandstone reefs. These beds also seem to lie close to the base of the 

 series, for about the mouth of Kiacho Doce and scattered among the 

 exposures are big granite boulders, many of them more than a metre 

 in diameter, apparently weathered or washed from a heavy basal 

 conglomerate. 



The bituminous shales at Eiacho Doce are fossiliferous, containing 

 abundant diatoms, plant fragments, and fish remains. The diatoms are 

 fresh-water forms, while the land plants are too fragmentary for identi- 

 fication. One fossil fish Avas identified by Mr. F. A. Lucas of the U. S. 

 National Museum as Diplomystus laticostatus Cope, a form that is found 

 also at Bahia. 



The dips of the beds vary greatly in amount and considerably in di- 

 rection, but the general direction is landward, — toward the red bluff that 

 rises on the west. This bluff" is a beautiful example of the weathered 

 sediments ; it is about a hundred metres in height, half a kilometre or 

 more in length, and is most brilliantly colored. Seen from the beach 

 half a kilometre away, the beds appear to be horizontal. 



A noticeable feature of the dips at all the exposures on the coast is 

 that they are landward. A section at Riacho Doce would fit most of 

 the cases thus far seen. 



Some of the most accessible localities at which these beds are to be 

 seen are at and about the city of Olinda near Pernambuco. There is a 

 good exposure at Olinda about a hundred metres northwest of the Vara- 

 douro station in the rear of a wine factory. Here the beds are horizon- 

 tal, lumpy, yellowish rocks containing fossils ; the exposure is at the 

 base of the hill, and the thickness visible is six or seven metres. My 

 friend, Dr. Louis Lombard, formerly Director of the Escola de Engenha- 

 ria of Pernambuco, showed me some fossils collected hy him from beds 

 exposed on the Olinda beach at low tide. 



The hill on which the Carmo church stands is of mottled beds toward 

 the top, while near the base small patches of the yellowish fossiliferous 

 rock appear here and there. On the slope of the hill below the Church 

 of Sao Francisco the mottled and the yellow limy rocks are mingled in a 

 newly opened drainage ditch. 



About a kilometre west of Olinda are some typical exposures of the 

 colored beds known as the Ruinas de Palmira. These "ruins" are at 

 about the same elevation as the upper parts of the Olinda hills. 



At Maria Farinha limy fossiliferous beds are exposed about the bases 

 of all the hills near the mouth of the river and along the estuary for 



