EARLIEE TERTIARY (EOCENE AND OLIGOCENE). 781 



aJso these volcanics have thrust themselves through the sediments and now appear as islands 

 in the older rocks. The strata do not now lie horizontally but have been tilted at low angles, 

 making an irregular series of folds. Some faults also occur. 



Many drill holes have been bored in this Tertiary basin in search of lignite seams, and 

 with some good results. Most of them, however, were put down at or near the edge of the 

 river, and only one near the western edge of the basin. * * * These have disclosed the 

 thickest lignite seams to be in the vicinity of the town of Princeton, where a bed over 18 

 feet in thickness was struck at a depth of 49 feet below the surface. The hole in which this 

 seam was found was sunk near the bridge over the Similkameen River to a depth of 280 feet. 

 In this hole lignite seams aggregating 35 feet 7 inches were crossed in the first 90 feet, whUe 

 the rest was in shales and sandstones. 



Several drill records are given, the strata having been penetrated in one hole 

 to a depth of 1,000 feet. In regard to the character of the hgnite, Camsell states: 



Though these beds are of the same age as thfe Coldwater group of the Nicola country, in 

 which coal also occurs, there is a difference in the quality of the fuel contained in each. The 

 Nicola coal is a true bituminous, whereas this is a lignite. The former, also, is considerably 

 higher in fixed carbon and lower in water, while the fuel rate is 1.447, as against 1.108 of the 

 Princeton coal. 



Some of the beds of the Princeton coal basin are only in a primary std^e of formation, 

 and they still show the brown, woody fiber of the slightly altered vegetable remains. Much 

 retinite also occurs in them. Some also have been completely destroyed by combustion, and 

 it is to the combustion of an underlying bed of lignite that Dr. Dawson attributed the 

 metamorphism and color of the rocks at the Vermilion Bluffs. 



M-N 11-12. GREAT PLAINS, ALBERTA. 



The Eocene of the Great Plains in Alberta is the Paskapoo series of the Canadian 

 Survey, the so-called "Upper Laramie," which is areally continuous with the Fort 

 Union and is approximately its equivalent. Beneath the Paskapoo lies the 

 Edmonton, which is classed as Cretaceous by Stanton on the evidence of brackish- 

 water faunas and dinosaurian remains, whereas by Knowlton it is placed in the 

 Tertiary on account of the flora which it contains. The Canadian Survey regards 

 the Edmonton as Cretaceous. Both these formations are mapped as earliest 

 Tertiary or latest Cretaceous (5a) . . 



Tyrrell's original descriptions ^^^^ of the Edmonton and Paskapoo are in part 

 as follows: 



The Edmonton series is perhaps, on the whole, the most characteristic series of the entire 

 region, for though its thickness, wherever determinable, was never found to exceed 700 feet, 

 the horizontal position of the strata causes it to underlie a very large extent of country. 



It consists generally of whitish or light-gray clay and soft clayey sandstone, weathering 

 very rapidly with more or less rounded outhnes. In some places, as on Red Deer River and 

 in the Hand HUls, it is seamed with a great number of beds of ironstone, which, with thin 

 beds of lignite and lignitic shale, give a definite banded character to all the escarpments. It 

 also contains a great number of nodules of compact ironstoncj which are often perched on 

 little pinnacles cut out of the soft sandstone. In the northern portion, especially along the 

 North Saskatchewan, the banded appearance is seldom seen, though, with the exception of a 

 smaller quantity of ironstone, the rock has very much the same character as farther south. 



This is essentially the coal-bearing horizon within the district, all the coal found east of 

 the foothills, except probably the seams on the upper North Saskatchewan and at Egg Creek, 



