1846.] 



DAWSON ON FOSSILS FROM NOVA SCOTIA. 



133 



faces and penetrate the thickness of many of the beds. Many of these 

 worm-tracks are marked with striae, probably produced by the setcB 

 of the worms. Beds similarly marked are seen in several places near 

 Tatmagouche ; and on the western side of the neighbouring pro- 

 montory of Malagash, where the strata of the coal-formation have 

 been thrown into a vertical position, large rippled and worm-tracked 

 surfaces are exposed in the perpendicular face of the cliff. These 

 ancient shores or banks, swarming with worms, were probably the 

 feeding-grounds of the animals, a few of whose footmarks their sur- 

 faces have retained. 



2. Coniferous wood. — At a particular level in the lower part of 

 the newer coal- formation, calcareous petrifactions of coniferous wood 

 are very abundant, in some instances appearing to have belonged to 

 extensive rafts of drift-wood. A bed of sandstone, containing one 

 of these petrified rafts, is well exposed on the shore between Cape 

 Malagash and Wallace Harbour, and is there associated with a bed 

 of gypsum, and a thin layer of limestone containing a few marine 

 shells, of species found also in the lower carboniferous rocks ; the 

 whole forming a peculiar and unusual association of fossils, and 

 affording the only instance that I have yet observed, of the oc- 

 currence of lower carboniferous shells at a level higher than that 

 of the great coal-measures (as shown in the annexed section). 



Section of Carboniferous Rocks at M'Kenzie's Mill near Wallace Harbour. 



4. Grey sandstones with Catamites and trunks of Coni/eres. 



3. Reddish clay and shales. 



2. White granular gypsum. 



1. Limestone with Terebratulee, &c. 



In the bed of coniferous wood at Malagash, the structure of many 

 of the trunks has been very perfectly preserved ; and slices exhibit 

 very distinctly polygonal discs on the walls of the cells, like those 

 of the genus Araucaria. On comparing slices from this locality 

 with others of specimens from different parts of this country, which 

 had not previously afforded very satisfactory results, it appears that 

 the species of coniferous trees most abundantly found in the coal- 

 formation of Pictou and Cumberland counties have the structure of 

 the Araucarian pines. I have hitherto found no specimen exhibiting 

 the discs of ordinary pines. On the weathered ends of trunks of 

 Araucaria, in the sandstones at Pictou and near Wallace, rings of 

 growth are often very apparent ; and in some instances, the layers 

 of yearly growth having separated in the progress of decay, as is 

 often seen in recent wood, they have left vacant spaces, occupied in 

 the fossils by calcareous spar. In a transverse slice the rings of 

 growth can easily be seen with the naked eye. They do not exceed 

 in width those of vigorous individuals of many recent coniferous 

 species, but their limits are much less distinctly marked than in any 

 Coniferse now growing in this climate. 



