J.P. Lesley on the Coal-measures of Cape Breton. 189 
tain and valley, stretching from the Appalachicola and Alabama 
Rivers in the South, to the Delaware and Hudson in the North, 
cannot fail to recognize them and distinguish them anywhere, 
The tout ensemble or facies of each is sui generis.* Fossils may 
come in afterwards as a satisfactory confirmation; but the eye 
has already determined the respective formations. Even in the 
est, where Formation IX has dwindled, like Formation XI, 
to an insignificant one or two hundred feet, and scarcely sepa- 
rates the green sands of X from the green shales o I, the 
characteristic features of the three formations, although modified 
and harmonized by the preponderance of the argillaceous ele- 
ment, are still in sufficient contrast to be recognized when fairly 
seen, 
o an eye thus trained among the broad outcrops of the 
Lower, Middle, and Upper Devonian of the Appalachians, it is 
evident that the mountains of Cape Breton and the hills of 
Northern Nova Scotia, surrounding or intervening between the 
already-mentioned red shale borders of the coal areas, are com- 
posed of these formations. True, the anticipation of finding 
these formations has a tendency to warp the judgment and de- 
lude the eye, especially when that anticipation is based upon 
such a probability as this: that a mass, three miles thick and 
a thousand miles long, will maintain its thickness (and of course 
its topographical height and geographical breadth) at least as far 
along the prolongation of its isometric axis (to use Mr. Hull’s 
new and much-needed term), as will such minor formations as 
the Coal over it or the Upper Silurian limestones under it. In 
other words, if analogies between the Nova Scotia and the 
United States coals compel us to consider them synchronic, if 
me originally conterminous; and if the Clinton fossils of New 
oc 
: Peiiad upon the Devonian conformably or unconformably, The 
rovince is in fact a wide belt of mountains partially ad 
: _ Merged; and may have been to some extent in the same con 
we may have principe, Formation VIII, while in the country 
_ South of the Lake Bras d’Or we may have the full series of VIII, 
 ~*TX, and X. b 
X,andX. The 
_ Hall and Lyell to be Hamilton and Chemung, and now consid. 
. Soe gmap by Dawson, p. 58, supplementary chapter to Acadian Geology, 
