98 THE PLIOCENE AND PLEISTOCENE DEPOSITS OF MARYLAND 



the section has changed. Some ancient stream must have established its 

 valley on the Earitan sand, for here the surface of that formation, like a 

 great concave depression, passes gradually beneath the beach to appear 

 again in the cliff a hundred and fifty yards to the south. In this hollow, 

 lying unconformably on the Earitan formation, is a bed of dark-colored 

 clay about fifteen feet thick. Bluish and greenish tinted bands of clay 

 relieve somewhat the somber aspect of this deposit, and at about its 

 middle portion it carries a bed of peat. But its most striking feature is 

 the presence of huge fossil cypress knees and stumps which are imbedded 

 in its lower portion. These stumps vary in diameter from two to over 

 ten feet, and after the removal of the surrounding clay, stand out promi- 

 nently in the position in which they must have grown. Mr. A. Bibbins, 

 to whom the author is indebted for notes on these deposits, has counted 

 thirty-two of these stumps which were visible at one time, and also reports 

 finding worm-eaten beechnuts intimately associated with cypress cones 

 near the base of the formation. Sands and gravels of the Talbot forma- 

 tion overlie the Avhole. Immediately south of this outcrojD the dark- 

 colored clays are temporarily replaced by the Earitan formation, but they 

 appear again a little further down the shore, and afford a good and almost 

 unbroken exposure for about a mile. The thickness of the clay in this 

 locality is at first about ten or twelve feet, but it gradually becomes thin- 

 ner southward and finally disappears altogether. Casts of Unio shells 

 and not vegetable remains are its predominant fossils, while, like the 

 beds containing the cypress swamp, it overlies the Earitan formation un- 

 conformably, and is itself abruptly buried beneath Talbot sands and 

 gravel. 



Another locality of these deposits is on the bay shore, about a mile 

 northeast of Drum Point (Plate XVI, Fig. 1). Here, at the base of a 

 cliff about thirty feet high, is a two-foot bed of dark, chocolate-colored 

 clay carrying gnarled and twisted sticks protruding in every direction 

 from the material in which they are imbedded. Above this occurs a thin 

 seam of lignite one and a half feet thick, which in turn is overlain with 

 about five feet of slate-colored clay. At this point the continuity of the 

 deposit is interrupted by a series of sands, clays, and gravels of \\n- 



