278 RESEARCH IN CHINA. 
series seems to be devoid of coal, which may lie higher in the system than 
any strata remaining in those synclines. 
Although we were not able to make a detailed examination of the 
beds at K’ui-ché6u on the Yang-tzi, the succession there seemed to be 
similar in the large to that just described, with the exception that Pumpelly 
reports, in place of the basal red shale, a fine-grained micaceous sandstone 
grading upward into calcareous sandstone. The gray limestone there is 
slightly thicker. Nearly 5 miles, 8 kilometers, below Pa-tung-hién it con- 
tains a workable coal-seam near its base, and 2 miles, 3 kilometers, above 
K’ui-chéu six thin seams of coal in the same limestone are being mined 
for the manufacture of briquets. 
East of the mountains of Carboniferous limestone at I-chang, there 
is apparently a recurrence of the K’ui-chéu formation. As the massive 
Wu-shan limestone declines beneath the river at a gentle angle, it is 
followed by coarse conglomerates, sandstone, and sandy shale, which are 
locally reddish. We had no opportunity of examining the rocks, but 
the description of them given by Pumpelly is here quoted as significant: * 
Near the city of I-chang, at the eastern mouth of the gorge, the limestone strata, 
trending here N. E., and dipping about 8° to the S. E., are covered by apparently con- 
formable beds of fine-grained, gray sandstone, which, toward the top, soon merges into 
a coarse conglomerate. The change is very marked, the upper portion of the sandstone 
containing rounded fragments of chert near the contact, and the lower part of the con- 
glomerate having lenticular deposits of sandstone. This transition appears to mark some 
important change that took place during the formation of these deposits, and the fact 
that, in transverse section, they border the river for 12 miles and have a great thick- 
ness, would seem to indicate that this change was not confined to the immediate neigh- 
borhood. This conglomerate is followed by a red sandstone, which above Itu dips 
easterly, and below that place westerly. From here eastward the country on both sides 
of the river is flat, the rocks being covered for the most part by alluvial deposits. 
As the K’ui-chéu series is the highest formation in the sequence ex- 
posed in the lower gorges of the Yang-tzi, and has therefore been partly 
removed by erosion, we can not estimate the total thickness of the forma- 
tion. The sections we saw are probably less than 1,000 feet thick. 
Fossils were found in the gray semicrystalline limestone, about 400 
feet, 120 meters, above the base of the formation just above the red sandy 
shales, near San-shi-li-p’u on the Ta-ning-ho. One brachiopod (a terebrat- 
uloid) is abundant in certain layers of this limestone, but unfortunately 
it can not be identified with certainty. In addition to the species in the 
following list, the microscope shows here and there shells of foraminifera 
resembling those of the family Textulariide: 
Dielasma sp. (ef. Dielasma elongatum) Pelecypod indet. 
Aviculipecten (2) richthofent Girty Crinoidal fragments 

* Smithsonian Contributions, vol. xv, Geological Researches in China, Mongolia, and Japan, p. 7. 
