PLEISTOCENE SOUTHWEST OF JAMES BAY. 385 
Macoma fragilis (Tellina grenlandica). These, with a Leda, were also the 
species observed at the highest localities on the Mattagami. Along the 
Albany river, which flows into the western side of James bay, and also 
on its great southern branch, the Kenogami, the banks, as well as the 
deposits of which they are composed, are similar to those of Moose river 
and its branches. I estimated the elevation of the highest and most in- 
land locality at which I found marine shells on the Kenogami to be 450 
feet above the sea.* The Attawapiskat is the largest river flowing into 
James bay north of the Albany. I surveyed this stream for upward of 
300 miles from the sea, and although it flows through a level country 
and has low banks, I did not detect marine shells at any great distance 
from the head of tide. 
Although the existence of lignite in situ in the superficial deposits of 
the Albany and Abitibi rivers may be inferred from the occurrence of 
loose pieces of it along their shores, beds of this substance have as yet 
been noticed only on the Kenogami and the Missinaibi. On the former 
stream it was found in the bottom of an old channel excavated in the 
till and again filled up by boulder clay.t This bed contained sticks of 
coniferous woods and of the canoe birch, but no animal remains were 
detected in it. 
Along the Missinaibi, beds of lignite were seen at a number of places 
all the way from the foot of the Archean plateau to the junction of the 
Mattagami. The first of these was in the west bank of a southern branch 
called Coal brook, three-quarters of a mile from the main river. This 
bed is three feet or more in thickness, is underlaid by soft sticky blue 
clay, and overlaid by about 70 feet of till, full of small pebbles, passing 
into gravel at the top. This lignite contains a little iron pyrites, and 
much of it retains a distinct woody character. Some of the flattened 
trunks embedded in it are two feet in diameter. 
““On the south side of the river, at nineteen miles below Coal brook or two miles 
above Woodpecker island, a horizontal seam of lignite was found in the midst of 
a bank of till 125 feet high. It is from 14 to 23 feet thick, and is made up princi- 
pally of sticksand rushes. Below the lignite are 80 feet of yellow-weathering gray 
clay and above it 45 feet of blue clay. Both varieties of clay are full of pebbles, 
and they also hold some striated boulders of Laurentian gneiss, Huronian schists, 
and unaltered Devonian limestone. : 
“At three miles below Woodpecker island, or nine miles above the mouth of 
Opazatika river, another bed of lignite occurs in the bank on the same side. It is 
six feet thick, but diminishes to the eastward, and is of a shaly character, being 
made up of laminze of moss and sticks. Immediately beneath the lignite is a layer 
* Geological Survey Report for 1871-’72, p. 112. 
7 Geological Survey Report for 1871-72. 
LVII—Butt. Geor. Soc. Am!, Von. 9, 1897 
