FUCOIDES IN THE COAL FORMATIONS. 



319 



hundred and fifty feet, while the intermediate strata do not have altogether a thickness of 

 twenty-five feet. The shales are generally soft, slightly micaceous, and black-spotted by 

 oxide of iron. They contain in places a quantity of branching cylindrical Fucoides, 

 mostly resembling the small variety of what has been called Falasophycus tulmlaris by 

 Prof. J. Hall.* 



8th. These shales are still overlaid by a thick bank of hard, gritty, micaceous sandstone, 

 generally conglomerate at its upper part, and capping the hills here around. Its lower 

 part, somewhat shaly, is also marked by abundant Fucoidal prints. I say prints, because 

 these Fucoides in the sandstone are not true remains of plants, but only the moulds left 

 by the decay of marine Alga?, whose place lias been filled by a softer whitish sand. Ac- 

 cordingly, the original form of the plants are pretty distinctly printed on the stone. The 

 moulds are generally placed horizontally on the stones, but sometimes penetrate them 

 obliquely or even vertically. These Fucoides arc somewhat thicker than those of the 

 shales, varying in thickness from one-half to. one inch, either simple, like flexuous pipes, 

 or irregularly forking on one side only, or dividing from a central axis, and sending 

 branches in every direction. They have, as much at least as can be seen from these 

 moulds, the same form and size as the large variety of Palaiophycus tubularis, Hall, as it 

 is represented figs. 1 and 2, quoted above. 



Though the shales of this section are mostly soft, grayish, apparently well fitted for the 

 preservation of remains of coal plants, there is not, in the whole, any trace of ferns or of 

 any of the species of land plants generally and commonly found in the Carboniferous 

 measures. At one place only, just below the mill, one mile above Wurtemberg, the bed 

 of coal at the base of the; section is divided into two members by a shaly sandstone, which 

 bears the prints of the bark of Catamites, Lepidodendrou, and Sigillaria, The upper 

 division of the coal is here still overlaid by the limestone with Caiderpites margiuatus. 



This distribution of strata strikingly resemble what is seen in some part of the Subcar- 

 boniferous measures of Kentucky, Illinois, and Arkansas, where the upper and even the 

 second bed of the Archimedes Limestone are underlaid by shaly sandstone, marked with 

 remains of large coal plants, especially trees and thin strata of coal. In the same way 

 the fossil remains covering the soft shales and printed with the upper Conglomerate Sand- 

 stone, are like those remarked in the Chemung, along Oil Creek, or in the Waverly Sand- 

 stone of Ohio. They appear indeed identical. Relying then on palajontological evidence, 

 I could but consider the hill opposite Wurtemberg as formed mostly of Chemung measures, 

 and the Conglomerate Sandstone of the top as the equivalent of the Millstone grit. It 

 was only after conferring upon the matter with my friend, Prof. J. P. Lesley, than whom no 



* Palaeontology of New York, vol. i, p. 7, tnb. 2, figs. I, 2, 4, 5. 



