304 RESEARCH IN CHINA. 
such that it is not probable the graywacke-schists can be the Sin-t’an 
underlying the Wu-shan, for the schists appear to be above that formation. 
The schists are such rocks as may well be derived by metamorphism from 
the K’ui-chéu red beds, since they are both sandy and ferruginous. Thus 
from their apparent stratigraphic position and their lithologic character 
we infer that they are the representatives of the Permo-Mesozoic, even 
though they are considerably metamorphosed. 
The coal-mine east of P’ing-li-hién is worked on a small vein, which is 
very badly squeezed and faulted. Silvery schists of the K’ui-chéu extend 
along the river, and the blue-black siliceous limestone of the Wu-shan 
outcrops both north and south of them. It is difficult to say in what 
horizon the faulted coal occurs, but it appears to be in the schist in an 
overturned syncline. All the beds dip north from 10° to 40°, and the 
structure is apparently that of a syncline of K’ui-chéu and Wu-shan schists, 
crushed under massive bodies of the lower Wu-shan limestone, which is 
overthrust from the north. The strike which, south of P’ing-li, trends 
north-northwest, now changes to east-west. Thirty-five miles, 56 kilo- 
meters, west by north from P’ing-li, on the Han river, we crossed a similar 
zone of apparent overthrusting of the Wu-shan on the K’ui-chéu, and we 
believe the structure to be a continuous major feature of the region. 
North of P’ing-li-hién, the Wu-shan formation occurs in its charac- 
teristic phase of blue-black calcareous and siliceous argillite, often a cliff- 
making rock, much jointed and somewhat slaty. The beds dip both north 
and southeast, on sharp local folds which pitch steeply northeast. Coal 
is mined at several places. 
The hills near Liu-wang-miau and thence northward to Hing-an-fu 
are composed of monotonous gray phyllites and brownish mica-schists, 
which extend northwestward across the Han-kiang. Near Lau-hién the 
schists contain coal, and in some of the slates streaks of hematite occur. 
The mineral is mined in a small way as an ore of iron. This occurrence 
of coal and iron ore, together with the general lithologic character of the 
schists, leads us to place the rocks in the K’ui-ch6u formation. 
We thus recognize two distinct coal-bearing formations in this region, 
one of them equivalent to the Wu-shan limestone, and the other to the 
K’ui-chéu beds of the Yang-tzi valley. This opinion is supported by the 
fact that coal occurs in both formations in eastern Ssi-ch’uan, and also 
in both the Carboniferous* and the Jurassict in the northeastern part of 
the same province. 

* Von Richthofen, China, vol. 1, p. 60. (At Tschau-tien coal-seams occur in the midst of a thick 
black limestone. Carboniferous fossils, such as Spirifer lineatus, occur in the limestone both above and 
below the coal horizon.) 
{ Ibid., p. 603. (The coal-beds at Kwang-yiien overlie beds which are believed to be'.Permian or 
Triassic. The coal-bearing shales themselves contain fossils similar to those of the European Jurassic.) 
