File:The Quarterly journal of the Geological Society of London (14095879373).jpg

ON THE GEOLOGY OF THE
t^
.
as
principally of coniferous wood, having
the texture of a bright hard lignite
approaching to the characters of true
bituminous coal, and affording a yalu-
able fuel. Beds of this character are
very extensively distributed over the
region*. The shales associated with
the coals hold many vegetable frag-
ments ; but no well-characterized spe-
cimens were obtained, though there
were abundant indications of forests
of angiospermous and gymnospermous
trees. Better-preserved remains of
them, obtained from other sections,
will be found referred to in a paper by
the writer in the ' Transactions of the
Eoyal Society of Canada' (vol. i.
1883).
These beds at Medicine Hat are
believed, on stratigraphical evidence,
by the officers of the Geological Survey
to be below the Et. Pierre group, and
therefore probably of Cenomanian
age ; yet in lithological character they
have a very close resemblance to the
Laramie beds ; and even their fossils,
so far as known, are scarcely distin-
guishable from those of the upper
series, both holding shells of the sam e
genera. They would seem to occupy
the top of a flat anticlinal, on both
sides of which are seen beds a little
higher in the series.
About twenty miles east of Medicine
Hat, at Eoss's Creek, some of the next
beds in ascending order occur, and are
believed to belong to the Pierre series.
They are light-coloured marls and clays
with Ammonites, OytJierea^ and bones
of fish and Dinosaurs; above these
are gypseous clays ; and, still higher,
brownish shales holding a bed of
lignite.
West of the localities above de-
scribed, similar Cretaceous beds occupy
the country nearly to the base of the
mountains (fig. 2) ; and beds of coal, some

• See map by Dr. G. M. Dawson, and Re-
  

port on Bow and Belly Coal Fields. Geolo-
gical Survey of Canada, 1883.