NOVA SCOTIA COAL-STRATA. 
419 
in the first place, understand that the newest or last-mention¬ 
ed coal formations would have been the only ones known to 
us (for they would have covered all the others), had there 
not been two great movements in opposite directions, the 
first consisting of a general sinking of three miles, which 
took place during the Carboniferous Period, and the second 
an upheaval of more limited horizontal extent,’by which the 
anticlinal axis A was formed. That the first great change 
of level was one of subsidence is proved by the fact that 
there are shallow-water deposits at the base of the Carbonif¬ 
erous series, or in the lowest beds of l^o. 2. 
Subsequent movements produced in the Nova Scotia and 
the adjoining New Brunswick coal-fields the usual anticlinal 
and synclinal flexures. In order to follow these, w^e must 
survey the country for about thirty miles round the South 
Joggins, or the.region where the erect trees described in the 
foregoing pages are seen. As we pass along the cliffs for 
miles in a southerly dii-ection, the beds containing these fos¬ 
sil trees, which were mentioned as dipping about 18° south, 
are less and less inclined, until the}^ become nearly horizontal 
in the valley of a small river called the Shoulie, as ascertain¬ 
ed by Dr. Dawson. After passing this synclinal line the 
beds begin to dip in an opposite or north-easterly direction, 
acquiring a steep dip where they rest unconformably on the 
edges of the Upper Silurian strata of the Cobequid Hills, as 
shown in Fig. 447. But if we travel northward towards Mi- 
nudie from the region of the coal-seams and buried forests, 
we find the dip of the coal-strata increasing from an angle of 
18° to one of more than 40°, lower beds being continually 
exposed to view till we reach the anticlinal axis A and see 
the lower Carboniferous formation. No. 2, at the surface. 
The missing rocks removed by denudation are expressed by 
the faint lines at A, and thus the student will see that, ac¬ 
cording to the principles laid down in the seventh chapter, 
we are enabled, by the joint operations of upheaval and de¬ 
nudation, to look, as it were, about three miles into the inte¬ 
rior of the earth without passing beyond the limits of a sin¬ 
gle formation. 
