806 The American Geologist. May, imi 
certain islands of the San Juan archipelago — partially sub- 
merged reliefs of the Vancouver range in the gulf of Georgia, 
thus serving, on the other hand, to connect the productive 
coal series of the Puget group with the Chico beds of eastern 
Vancouver (Nanaimo group).* 
On the shore of Bellingham bay, gulf of Georgia, and vi- 
cinity, north of the latitude of Puget sound proper, coal- 
bearing strata in moderate elevation come down to the water's 
edge. The contact of this formation with the older rocks of 
the Vancouver series of the San Juan islands, is concealed 
beneath the bay. Along with a section of some 3,000 feet of 
lignitic strata still farther to the north at the mouth of the 
Fraser river, this formation has commonly been referred to 
the Neocene, on the evidence of earlier determinations of leaf 
impressions in the Gibbs collection. Both sections, however, 
though the more recently included by Dr. Dawson with the 
Puget group of White, equivalent with the Laramie, are 
apparently so included on the assumption of uniformly a 
higher range of that group as compared with the Chico hori- 
zon or Nanaimo group of Vancouver island, and also of estuar- 
ine or brackish water origin. f This assumption not unnatu- 
rally follows from the fact that the small development of 
marine Tejon strata at South Seattle, as hitherto recognized, 
has been comprised by Dr. White in the Puget group, which 
on physical grounds has been supposed to occupy transitionnl 
relations between the Cretaceous and Eocene formations. 
The independence and inferential unconformity, together 
with an extensive areal distribution of these important 
strata, which really constitute, so far as revealed, the basal 
structure of the present maritime basin of the sound, has 
been pointed out in the preceding pages. 
Between the Roslyn survival of the coal series at a maxi- 
mum elevation of some 5,000 feet, and the nearest coal Held 
on the opposite side of the Cascades, namely, that of Green 
and Cedar rivers, intervenes an Alpine belt about 86 miles in 
breadth. In common with the similar survival near Wenat- 
chee, at an elevation of some 2,000 feet, this culminating de- 
=^Diller, Bull. Geol. See. Am., iv, p. 217. 
tAmer. Jour. Sci., 1890, xxxix, p. 180. 
