190 J.P. Lesley on the Coal-measures of Cape Breton. 
ered by Hall and Dawson to be indisputably Clinton, although 
overlaid and concealed along most of its extent by apparently 
nonconformable Coal measures, gives us a fixed lower limit for 
the so-called metamorphic hill country of the Province, which 
makes this hill country necessarily Devonian, or Formations 
, [X, and X. Even if we object to the term Devonian, | 
and permit the paleontologists to carry down the term Carbon- 
iferous, or the term Subcarboniferous, step by step, so as toim- 
clude first, Formation X, perhaps rightly, and then the genuine 
Old Red IX, and even, as the effort is in the Western States, to 
include Formation VIII down to its black shale beds with coal, 4 
the change of term will not change the lithology,—the moun- 
tains of Nova Scotia must. still be the representatives of the 
Catskill, Mohantongo, Terrace, and Alleghany Mountains of 
and Pennsylvania. 
The eye can hardly be mistaken in the features of the road- 
side banks between Antigonish and Merigonish; the road defiles 
through hills of VIII. Equally certain is it that the outcrops 
on the road from St. Peter’s to Sydney are of the reddish an 
greenish rocks of IX and X. The road for forty miles winds 
along the lake shore, and in and out of ravine8 descending from 
a group of parallel mountains of these formations, made parall 
by a system of parallel anticlinal and synclinal curves which — 
issue from the lake and throw the mountain dips to the north 
and to the south alternately, at angles from 5° to 45°. Great 
rib-plates of flinty sandrock rise to the summit and form tablets 
with broken cliffs upon the outcrop side, fine objects seen thus — 
against the sky. The mountains at the head of the east arm of @ 
the lake, and those on its northern side forming the peninsula, 
come down upon the shore in the same style, and belong tothe 
same system. On the south side of Miré Bay, in the ravines 
east of the Gabarus road bridge, there is no mistaking the aspect — 
of masses of slates of No. VIII standing at 45°; nor can one — 
be convinced that he is not riding through a forest grown ona — 
soil of IX, as he is whirled over the fine old road from Miré — 
bridge to Louisburg, although the highest elevation of the pla 
teau is but 350 feet. . 
Sa 
poin : oil 
_ At Pittsburg there are about a thousand feet of Coal-measu! 
{to the top coal), with a great bed 8 or 10 feet thick near the 
‘top, a 6 foot bed half way down, two small workable sues 
