1853.] DAWSON AND POOLE ALBION COAL. 45 



the present state of our knowledge, the former of these suppositions, 

 that of denudation, appears best to comport with the relations of the 

 shale and sandstone as observed in the trial-holes ; though a larger 

 number of facts bearing on the subject would certainly be desirable. 

 In any case there is evidence of great local inequality in the condi- 

 tions of deposit, and a high degree of probability that the previous 

 tranquil condition of the area of coal-accumulation was broken up 

 on the occurrence of strongly-marked physical changes. 



5. The Albion coal-measures are succeeded in the direction of their 

 dip by a thick and very coarse reddish conglomerate, no equivalent 

 of which occurs in any other part of the coal-formation of Nova Sco- 

 tia, at least in the vicinity of productive coal-measures. The outcrop 

 of this conglomerate forms a prominent ridge, extending several miles 

 in an east and west direction, and cut across by the valleys of the 

 East, Middle, and West Rivers of Pictou : where it crosses the East 

 River (about two miles north of the Albion mines), it dips at a high 

 angle to the north, but much of this dip seems to be due to false 

 stratification. Its outcrop runs obliquely to that of the Albion 

 measures, but is broken off from them by a line of dislocation accom- 

 panied by vertical and disturbed beds, some of which are shown on 

 Mr. Poole's Plan, at the place named DufFs Farm. 



It is to be observed, that the sandstone already referred to coin- 

 cides in part in its strike with this conglomerate, and for this and 

 other reasons, the conglomerate has generally been believed to succeed 

 the coal-measures in ascending order, and to form the base of the 

 series described by the writer as the "Newer Coal Formation*." 



The dislocation above referred to, and the circumstance that at 

 the Middle River the conglomerate at its southern side dips to the 

 south, forming a sort of small anticlinal, might afford reason to 

 suspect that it belongs to the lower carboniferous series, were it not 

 that it is succeeded in ascending order by a series of coal-formation 

 rocks evidently not belonging to the older part of the system, nor 

 equivalent to the Albion measures, and that it contains rounded frag- 

 ments not only of the older metamorphic rocks, but of the lower car- 

 boniferous grits underlying the coal-measures. This conglomerate 

 therefore either marks a change from the accumulation of vegetable 

 matter and fine mud to that of the coarsest mechanical detritus, or 

 it is the remains of a contemporaneous shingle-beach, separating the 

 area of the Albion coal-measures from a larger outer space, in which 

 deposits similar to those of the Joggins and Sydney coal-fields were 

 accumulating. 



I am inclined to prefer the last of these views for the following 

 reasons : — 1. The outcrop of the conglomerate extends from a point 

 opposite the promontory of metamorphic rock east of the East River, 

 to the high lands of Mount Dalhousie, in the eastern extremity of the 

 Cobequid range of hills, crossing the mouth of an indentation in the 

 metamorphic district, which in the older part of the carboniferous 

 period must have been a bay or arm of the sea, exposed to an open 

 expanse of water lying to the northward. 2. The conglomerate can- 



* Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. 1845, vol. i. p. 322. 



