1883.] Lower Ponent ( Catskill) Group of Middle Pennsylvania. 281 
and brown sandstone beds as already described. At about 300 
feet higher—measuring at right angles to the bedding—occur two 
other fish beds, small when compared with those already men- 
tioned, but equally distinct. The largest of them is only about 
half an inch in thickness, and the lower and smaller is a mere 
flake. They both show, however, the scales of the same genera, 
Holoptychius and Bothriolepis. These beds are useful as show- 
ing that these characteristic forms of the Catskill continued to live, 
and thus the beds already described, with their fossils, are hedged 
in above and below by remains of whose geological date no doubt 
Continuing above these second fish-beds, which are about two 
t apart, we meet with a succession of beds of red shale and 
brown sandstone with a few greenish shaly layers until nearly 150 
feet above them come in two or three thin green shales and blue 
limestone bands full of brachiopods and lamellibranchs of small 
size and species not yet determined. Another fossiliferous bed 
follows about twenty feet higher up. About 120 feet above this 
na thin, soft, green shale full of a small Beyrichia and other fos- 
sils, and the section ends a hundred feet higher with a massive 
green sandstone containing a bed of vegetable remains almost 
forming a thin seam of coal. 
We have, therefore, here a mass of strata, some of which are 
iliferous, extending nearly 1200 feet above the lowest Holop- 
tychius bed, and nearly 1400 feet above the base of the red shale. 
This mass equals about one-fourth of the total thickness of the 
Catskill group inthe county. It is right to add here that through- 
Out this paper the terms Catskill and Ponent are used synony- 
mously. The latter is, however, in Pennsylvania, the more defi- 
nite of the two. Professor Rogers included in it all the mass of 
_ Ted sandstones and shales between the green Vergent (Chemung) 
and the Vespertine (Pocono) sandstone. In that sense the terms 
oh here, without prejudice of future and further con- 
oe atever opinions may be entertained regarding the facts here 
SEB they evidently guide us to one of the following conclu- 
@. That the lower portion of the Ponent red sandstone‘and shale 
: (Catskitt) is less barren of organic remains than has been sup- 
=> OF, 
