GEOLOGY AND NATURAL HISTORY. 479 



which I do not now wish to insist, until I have further opportunities of confirming 

 it by observation. 



The most abundant locality of sternbergia, with which I am acquainted, occurs in 

 the neighbourhood of the town of Pictou, immediately below the bed of erect 

 calamities described in the Journal of the Geological Society. The fossils are found 

 in interrupted beds of very coarse sandstone, with calcareous concretions, imbedded 

 in a thick reddish brown sandstone. These gray patches are full of well preserved 

 calawites, which have either grown upon them, or have been drifted in clump s 

 with their roots entire. The appearances suggest the idea of patches of gray sand 

 rising from a bottom of red mud, with clumps of growing calamites which arrested 

 quantities of drift plants, consisting principally of sternbergia and fragments of 

 much decayed wood and bark, now in a state of coaly matter too much penetrated 

 by iron pyrites to show its structure distinctly. "We thus probably have the fresh 

 growing calamites, entombed along with the debris of the old decaying conifers of 

 some neighbouring shore ; furnishing an illustration of the truth that the most 

 ephemeral and perishable forms may be fossilized and preserved, contemporaneously 

 with the decay of the most durable tissues. The rush of a single summer may be 

 preserved with its minutest striaj unharmed, when the giant pine of centuries has 

 crumbled into mould. It is so now, and it was so equally in the carboniferous 

 period. 



ON FLEXURE OF STRATA IN THE BROAD-TOP COAL FIELD, PENNSYLVANIA. 

 BY J. P. LESLIE. 



In introducing the subject, Mr. Leslie stated that it had only recently come 

 under his notice, and required more consideration for the full elucidation of all the 

 truths which the phenomena he had to refer to tended to illustrate. Meanwhile it 

 was of importance to call the attention of scientific geologists to such a remarkable 

 example of flexure of strata as he had now to describe. Accordingly, availing 

 himself of an opportunity so favorable, he had prepared a diagram of the 

 appearance which these flexures presented, and although not so able to illus- 

 trate the aspect in question as he desired to have been, the subject repre- 

 sented a single fact to which he wished meanwhile to draw the attention of 

 the Association. The diagram represented a section of the only coal bed in 

 the broad-top region worked to any extent. He had obtained the section by 

 studying that bed in eight or ten entries. The principal facts of the case, and 

 patent to observation, were these : The bed itself is seven or eight feet thick, nine 

 feet at its thickest portions, and seldom becomes less than five feet. In working 

 this bed the greatest difficulties have been met with, in the shape of these flexures. 

 Such details are rarely witnessed elsewhere in any consecutive series. Single 

 instances have been found in innumerable places, but here they ocur in consecutive 

 series, presenting a curious difficulty to the practical miner. The form which 

 these flexures present amid their involutions, may be described as running up in an 

 angular position, and becoming steeper and steeper, nntil Ihey finally appear to " run 

 out." But on examination, it is found that the top shale turns upon itself, and be- 

 comes the bottom of the flexure, with a perfectly even surface, and without any 

 fracture. In this case, the miner is at a loss to discover where to go, and there 

 exists no trace of the coal upwards through the rock. The appearance which these 

 present, Mr. Leslie stated, i9 beautifully illustrated by a specimen which Sir "William 

 Logan has in his cabinet, derived from a Canadian locality, where it may be usefully 



