1859.] BAUEEMAX VANCOUVER ISLAND. 201 



surfaces of the shells are beautifully iridescent. In one instance I 

 found some fish-scales. The localities of the above fossils are two 

 cliffs in the valley of the Nanaimo River, about two miles to the 

 westward of the Hudson's Bay Company's settlement, and are known 

 as Pemberton's and Stewart's Banks. Another locality for similar 

 fossils is at Cormuck's or Comoux Island, twenty-one miles to the 

 N.W. of Nanaimo, where they occur in cement-stone nodules on the 

 sea-shore. The specimens sent from the latter place were obtained 

 by Mr. Dallas, of the Hudson's Bay Company, and Captain Stuart, 

 of the Company's establishment at Nanaimo. The forms obtained 

 from these localities are as follows : — 



Fish -scales Nanaimo River. 



Nautilus „ „ 



Ammonites Both localities. 



Baculites Very abundant in both localities. 



Inoceramus 2sp. Both localities. 



Astarte "^ 1 



T ' h • t lla '?"" I I m P er f ect casts °f interior of shell, Nanaimo River. 



3. Lignite -bearing Tertiaries of Nanaimo. — These beds im- 

 mediately succeed the cretaceous rocks ; and they are extensively 

 developed over a great extent of country, and form the mass of the 

 islands in the Gulf of Georgia as far south as Saturna Island. 

 Northward they occur at Fort Rupert, the most northerly settle- 

 ment on Vancouver Island. The sections at Nanaimo exhibit a 

 series of coarse sandstones, grits, and conglomerates, with sandy 

 micaceous flagstones, all of which appear to be unfossiliferous. The 

 sandstones, although intensely hard when freshly exposed, are very 

 concretionary in character, and weather very irregularly. They 

 contain in places large spherical masses of slightly ferruginous sand, 

 twelve to eighteen inches in diameter. Two scams of coal, averaging 

 six to eight feet each in thickness, occur in these beds, and are 

 extensively worked for the supply of the steamers navigating between 

 Victoria and the Frazer River. The coal is a soft black lignite, of 

 a dull earthy fracture, interspersed with small lenticular bands of 

 blight crystalline coal, and resembles some of the duller varieties of 

 coal produced in the South Derbyshire and other central coal-fields in 

 England. In some places it exhibits the peculiar jointed structure 

 (causing it to split into long prisms) which is commonly observed in 

 the brown-coal of Bohemia. A mineral allied to Betinite or Amber 

 is common in the more earthy portions. For economic purposes 

 these beds are very valuable. The coal burns very freely, and 

 yields alight pulverulent ash, giving a very small amounl of slag 

 or clinker: its evaporative value is. however, much diminished by 

 its low specific gravity, and by the large quantity <d' thick black 

 smoke driven off on ignition. 



Several partings of green ahaly clay, full <>i the remains of pL : 

 occur in the coal-seams, chiefly impressions of grass-like plants and 

 large leaves. The -hides are full of pyrites, and crumble on exposure 

 to the air, rendering it extremely difficult to preserve the fossils. 

 The American geologists are accustomed to assign these deposits ti- 

 the Miocene period ; bul as y. t do marine fossils have been found 



