148 SOUTHERN BORDER OF CENTRAL COAL FIELD. 



cora, and a great many stems of Encrinites. Below the spring is a bed of 

 recent conglomerate made up of the water- worn pebbles from the surround- 

 ing hills. Three miles west on the Llano road, at the forks of the creek, the 

 limestone extends across the creek from the south side. The massive lime- 

 stone (which may be Silurian) dips here to the northeast, and is about twenty 

 feet thick. Above it is the hard blue limestone which was seen at the spring. 

 Above that is ten feet of the yellow shale, and above that ten feet of shaly 

 limestone. The fossils seen are evidently those of the Carboniferous, but 

 they have been badly pressed and are out of shape. 



Six miles west of Lampasas, in the bed of Donaldson's Creek, is a black, 

 thin-bedded limestone, which dips 1^ degrees north 20 degrees east, with a 

 line of jointing north 89 degrees east. Above this limestone is a hill sixty 

 feet high, the only stratum exposed being a fine grained blue limestone with 

 chert nodules. 



Three-fourths of a mile east of this last named place is Indian Bluff. This 

 is a perpendicular bluff, seventy feet high, composed of thin layers of lime- 

 stone, hard, black and shaly. This limestone overlies the rocks of the last 

 locality. 



At the top of this hill, in the fossiliferous limestone and in the chert nod- 

 ules, I obtained the following Carboniferous fossils : Spirifer cameratus, Pleu- 

 rotomaria turbiniformis, Bellerophon crassus, Spiriferina kentuckensis, Productus 

 nebrascensis, Platyceras nebr ascents, Euomphalus rugosus, Myalina subquadrata, 

 Synocladia biserialis, Bellerophon carbonarius, Machrocheilus fusiformis. 



The material in which these fossils occur is so hard that it is very difficult 

 to get good specimens of the fossils, and many of them could not be sepa- 

 rated from the matrix. In places the fossils are so badly distorted by pres- 

 sure that they could not be recognized. Especially is this the case with those 

 found in the black shale. 



Just west of Nix, the overlying Carboniferous sandstone is exposed for one 

 mile, when the Carboniferous limestone again appears. The dip of the strata 

 here is to the north, and at about 2 degrees. In this limestone were found 

 Productus semireticulatus, Productus punctatus, Nucula bellistriata, Chonetes, 

 spines of Archeocidaris. These fossils are mostly in the chert or flint nod- 

 ules found in the limestone. The limestone on top here very closely resem- 

 bles the cherty limestone seen at Indian Bluff. 



Near Mr. McRae's, fifteen miles west of Lampasas, are several caves, none 

 of which were explored. At another place, near by, the massive limestone 

 has been very badly fractured, and the water having carried off all the over- 

 lying material, some of the fractures are open to twenty feet in depth. This 

 stone is that which is called Burnet marble, and is near the boundary be- 



