LINE OF THE CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY. 383 
of them supposed to overlie those seen at Medicine Hat, occur at 
Maple Island, Blackfoot Crossing, and elsewhere. 
Near Calgary, however, on the Bow river, a formation occurs 
which differs from those previously seen, and probably belongs to 
the upper part of the Laramie group. Its most conspicuous feature 
is a bed of whitish sandstone, about 20 feet in thickness, and 
presenting all the appearance of a coal-formation sandstone. Some 
of its layers abound in well-preserved leaves of Dicotyledonous trees 
of numerous species and, so far as appears from a cursory examina- 
tion, similar to those described by the writer from the sandstones 
of the Lignitic group near the Souris river *. In state of preserva- 
tion and in some of their generic forms, these leaves much resemble 
those of the Swiss Molasse; and no doubt the Ualgary sandstone is 
an Hocene Molasse, related in mode of deposition to the Rocky Moun- 
tains as the Molasse is to the old rocks of the Alps. This sandstone 
is underlain and overlain by beds of grey, ferruginous, and black 
shales, in which are calcareous bands holding fossil shells of the 
genera Goniobasis and Corbula. 
West of Calgary, as the Cretaceous and Laramie beds enter the 
Rocky Mountains and approach the junction with the Palzeozoic 
rocks, they become much folded and disturbed, and the coals con- 
tained in them become harder and drier in quality, in some 
places approaching to anthracites. 
The development of the Cretaceous series in the region under 
consideration is, in the main, similar to that described by the United 
States seologists as occurring in the country south of the 49th 
parallel; and it shows the wide extent of plain and table land 
between the Laurentian and Paleozoic region on the east and the 
Rocky Mountains on the west to have alternated in that period 
between conditions of shallow water and of vast bogs and swamps. 
Such conditions were, however, more prevalent towards the south, 
where this ancient Cretaceous Mediterranean communicated with 
the ocean; and toward the north, in the vicinity of the Peace 
river, there seems to have been a barrier of land or shoals. With 
the exception of the folds impressed on their western edge by the 
elevation of the Rocky Mountains, these beds have remained 
entirely unchanged and undisturbed, and there seems to have been a 
continuity of deposition and an absence of unconformability from the 
Cretaceous into the Eocene and Miocene periods, though sandstones 
and conglomerates at several horizons indicate some considerable 
intensity of water-driftage. It would seem that over large parts of the 
area slight elevations and subsidences led to alternations of driftage of 
clay from the Arctic regions, or the accumulation of organic lime- 
stone and marl in warm waters sheltered from the north, with sand- 
drift in shallow water, or actual land and swamp surfaces holding 
‘lakes and lagoons. 
With reference to the contrast between these undisturbed 
Cretaceous beds and those of some other countries, we need not go 
~** Reports Canadian Survey, Memoir on Cretaceous and Tertiary Plants, 
Trans. R. 8. of Canada, 1888. 
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