450 PEOEESSOE HEEE ON THE EOSSIL ELOEA OE NOETH GEEENLAND. 
a few inches to 2 feet in thickness. The coal, in general, rested on and was overtopped 
by shales, but sometimes on shales, and was overtopped by sandstone, and vice versd, 
indeed as in our Carboniferous formation, and in the Pliocene coal-fields which I ex- 
amined in Washington Territory, U.S. It varied in thickness from a few inches to 
2 feet, though sometimes I found shaly slaty beds partaking of a lignitic character 
which reached to the thickness of 4 feet. These beds consisted of a great number ; I 
have enumerated between one and two hundred layers and beds, one alternating with 
another, and reaching to the height of some 1200 feet above the sea. 
“ Intersecting these beds, and crossing the bed of the stream, and running about 
N.W. and S.E., are three trap ‘dykes’ which may be styled A, B, and C. Where they 
come in contact with the strata I did not notice much contortion and scarcely any meta- 
morphosis, from which we might perhaps infer that the traps here and the sedimen- 
tary beds are not of the same geological age. (1) However, it ought to be mentioned that 
though these dykes in some cases cut diagonally through the sandstones, they did not 
seem to be metamorphosed ; and as confirmatory of the query I have advanced, I 
noticed that the sandstone lying in juxtaposition had contained fragments of trap. 
Further to the southward along the shore, about 200 yards from the mouth of the 
stream before mentioned, is exposed a section 
“1. Brown sandstone 2 feet, dip 33°. 
“ 2. Seam of clay, slate, and shaly coal ; irregular thickness, average 8 inches. 
“ 3. Seam of coal, 2 inches. 
“ 4. Splintery shales, 6 inches. 
“ 5. Whitish sandstone, stained brown in some places with oxide of iron, 2 feet ex- 
posed, but obscured by trap debris from above. 
“In this shale (or clayey slate) and in the sandstone where it joined the slate were 
faint impressions of vegetable structure, but so imperfect as only to be distinguishable 
as charred spots. 
“ After proceeding along the beach for mile the trap dyke A appears, coming 
down perpendicularly through the strata, and sending a longitudinal vein to interstra- 
tify between a seam of sandstone and a sandy description of shale. The spur of trap 
runs almost horizontally until it ends in a protuberant ‘ knob.’ The strata are slightly 
tilted at the line where the dyke cuts through them on the north side, which also gives 
them a slight northerly dip : the strike of all the strata is, however, the same, viz. circiter 
N.E, magnetic. These strata, however, resume their former southerly dip on the other 
side of the dyke, from which they had an opposite dip as from an anticlinal axis. This 
sandstone is of a coarse gritty character, and, as formerly remarked where it comes into 
contact with the igneous rock, does not seem to have suffered much metamorphosis 
though directly in contact ; indeed this was of such a small extent as to render the 
tracing of it a matter of difficulty. In some places on the line of contact between the 
sandstone and the trap, the trap seems (if the term may be allowed) to take the characters 
of the sandstone, being soft, crystalline in structure, and easily broken with the hand. 
