XI. On River Debris found in Sandstone

Abstract

At the present day, it may appear superfluous to bring forward proofs of the existence of rivers in Carboniferous times, and that these rivers carried in their flood the mud and sand which helped to form our shale and sandstone beds, but if we discover in the debris of these old rivers the remains of rocks containing animal remains brought from a distance, enclosed in a bed of sandstone—a circumstance seldom met with—another proof is recorded, and a new charm given to an old subject. The following interesting phenomena, lately come under my own observation, occur in an open quarry where a sandstone above the Virtue Well coal is wrought for building purposes, affording every facility for accurate investigation. The sandstone in this locality is sixty feet in thickness, the usual thickness being a few feet, and in some localities absent altogether. The arrangement of the beds is as follows:— 1. Sandstone, 60 feet. 2. Bed of Gritstone, 2 feet. 3. Shale bed, 18 inches. 4. Laminated Sandstone, 10 feet. 5. Black Shale. 6. Virtue Well coal. I will describe these beds in regular sequence, beginning at the upper or highest. 1. Sandstone bed. —This bed requires no special notice; it shews divisional planes and false bedding, and when split up, a piece of drifted coal is occasionally found. 2. Gritstone bed. —This bed is composed of angular and rounded pieces of quartz, of the size of field beans and under, embedded in sand; is about two feet in thickness, thinning-out and disappearing near the rise-end of the quarry; being This 250-word extract was created in the absence of an abstract