Preliminary Note on Recent Discoveries. 3 



and could not extricate themselves. On their death, and 

 the decomposition of their soft parts, their bones and other 

 hard portions remained in the bottom of the tree, inter- 

 mixed with any vegetable debris or soil washed in by rain, 

 and which formed thin layers separating successive animal 

 deposits from each other. Finally the area was again sub- 

 merged, or overflowed with water bearing sand and mud. 

 The hollow trees were filled to the top and their animal 

 contents thus sealed up. At length the material filling the 

 trees was by pressure and the access of cementing matter 

 hardened into stone, not infrequently harder than that of 

 the containing beds, and the whole being tilted to an angle 

 of 20°, and elevated into land exposed to the action of the 

 tides and waves, these singular coffins present themselves 

 as stony cylinders projecting from the cliff or reef, and can 

 be extracted and their contents studied. 



The singular combination of accidents above detailed 

 was, of course, of very rare occurrence, and in point of fact 

 until the year 1893 these conditions were known to occur 

 in only one set of beds : under the thick-bedded sandstone 

 in Division 4, Section XV. Coal -group 15, of my section of 

 the South Joggins. 1 



In the spring of 1893, however, Mr. P. W. McNaughton, 

 of the Joggins Coal Mine, who had been so kind as to watch 

 the exposures of trees in the cliff at my request, was so for- 

 tunate as to find two productive trees in beds considerably 

 below that which had afforded the previous discoveries. 

 According to Mr. McNaughton's observations, the lowest of 

 these trees is in Division 4, Section XII., Coal-group 26, of 

 my section, or 414 feet lower in the series than the original 

 bed, and abeut 1,611 feet distant from it along the shore. 

 The intervening beds, besides sandstones, shales and under- 

 clays, include fifteen small seams of coal, and five beds of 

 bituminous limestone and calcareo-bituminous shale, so that 

 they must represent a considerable lapse of time. The tree 

 was rooted in a shaly underclay, with coaly streaks and 



1 " Acadian Geology." 



