et eee 
In the section along the Estrada Nova near Minas, Santa Catharina, 
a thin (10 centimeters) coal with fragments of fossil plants in its 
roof, occurs at 329.2 meters above sea level, immediately under a 
massive grayish-white sandstone, 10 meters below, the Barro Branco 
coal. This would represent the Irapua coal horizon of Rio Grande 
do Sul, but the fossil plants are too fragmentary for identification. 
Lower Barro Branco sandstone 
Lying between the little coal bed just mentioned, and the coal 
(Barro Branco) next above, there occurs throughout the Minas region a 
rather soft sandstone, sometimes almost whitein color, except where 
stained with iron. It contains less feldspathic material than any other 
member of the series, and occasionally is pure enough to make a fair 
quality of sand for window glass and ordinary bottles, especially if 
washed. It makes a conspicuous outcrop along the Estrada Nova, just 
below the crest of the hill, 2.2 kilometers north-west from Minas, 
Fossil plant shale 
Immediately on top of the Lower Barro Branco sandstone and 
underlying the coal next above, there is a dark shale which holds fossil 
plants where exposed at the turn of theroad onthe Estrada Nova 3 1/4 
kilometers from Minas, and at an elevation of 338 meters above sea level. 
From this horizon the following species were collected, as identified by 
Dr David White : 
Glossopteris Browniana, Noeggerathiopsis Hislopi, 
Gangamopteris obovata, Cardiocarpon Morciranum, 
Vertebraria sp. 
The Barro Branco coal 
Atashort interval below the top of the Rio Bonito Beds, and inter- 
calated between two strata of sandstone, the Upper and Lower Barro 
Branco sandstones, there comes the most valuable, and widely persis- 
tent coal seam of theseries which, from the fact that it is generally 
separated into two divisions by white clay,has been termed the Barro 
Branco bed. 
