WAVERLY GROUP. 89 



The ore nodules were formerly collected and melted in a blast 

 furnace at Union City, which is now given up. Half a mile north 

 from the brick-yard on Mr. Randall's farm, the shale beds are 

 seen in outcrops along the banks and in the bed of Coldwater 

 Creek, amounting in the exposures to about 30 or 40 feet. The 

 lowest strata seen in the bed of the river are dark blue hard 

 shales, with gray carbonate of iron geodes and concretions of iron 

 pyrites ; above them some arenaceous seams pervade the shale 

 beds, following which are the beds seen in the brick-yard. The 

 fossiliferous, calcareo-ferruginous bed, and to some extent also the 

 kidney-ore geodes, contain the following species of fossils : Chone- 

 tes Illinoisensis, Strophomena rhomboidalis, Terebratula eudora(?) 

 several Spirifers not accurately determined, Spirlgera lamellosa, 

 Lingula, various species of Nucula, Myalina, Platyceras, Loxo- 

 nema, Pleurotomaria, Bellerophon cyrtolites, Bellerophon galericu- 

 latus, Goniatites Oweni, Nautilus, Proetus, some Bryozoa, and 

 others, not yet properly determined. 



South of Coldwater, in the town of Algansee, on Pencil Creek, in 

 the ravines of drift-covered hills, the shale formation, with its in- 

 termediate seams of sandstone and of kidney-ore geodes, can he 

 seen nicely exposed. Some of the iron geodes are fossiliferous. 

 In the town of Reading, the shale formation is everywhere found 

 under a thin coating of drift when digging wells, etc. ; natural out- 

 crops in the ravines and beds of creeks are also often encountered. 

 The shale is sometimes considerably arenaceous and pervaded by 

 regular sandstone ledges. These latter often contain fossils, but 

 the best preserved are always found in the calcareous or ferrugi- 

 nous seams or in the geodes. Besides the other forms mentioned 

 previously as found near Union City, I found in an outcrop in 

 Reading a large Nautilus digonus. 



The drift deposits of this region contain in places large quan- 

 tities of fragments of the Marshall sandstone, inclosing an abun- 

 dance of fine fossils ; one of these localities is near Round Lake, 

 in Sect. 32, of Allen township, where, by the excavation of a 

 road bed, masses of this sand rock were thrown out. To the west 

 and southwest of Coldwater, the shale formation is very soon lost 

 under the drift cover spread over the entire southwest part of the 

 State. The drift of all the western counties, as St. Joseph, Kala- 

 mazoo, Van Buren, and Allegan counties, is mixed with large 



