17

This section is interesting on account of the great similarity in lithological character and the imbedded fossils of the two sections numbers three and six, with two hundred and four feet of lime-stone intervening, which shows that a long period of time must have elapsed between the periods of their deposition. It is uncertain whether the surface rock of this section belongs to the Primordial Period. The specimens there collected have been misplaced, and it is impossible now to identify them. We only know from notes taken at the time, that it contains crinoids. In the precipitous rocks adjoining this place were great numbers of a gregarious squirrel, which were at times quite noisy and lively. They dwell in the cliffs of rocks, in places so steep that few other animals can reach them. They are about the size of the common gray squirrel, and have the tops of their heads and shoulders black, the rest grey. The writer succeeded in obtaining a specimen, and it proved to be an undescribed species. It belongs to the Spermophile family of squirrels, and was described in the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, by Dr. Slack, late in the year 1861, or early in 1862, as Spermophilus Buckleyii. It's food is vegetable, acorns, fruits and buds.

At but one locality have we seen the Potsdam dipping at a large angle. This is near the head waters of the Little Llano river, where the broken and upturned strata dip at an angle of about forty degrees west, ten degrees south. Here we have the following section:

No. 4 of this section has evidently been altered by heat. It's compact layers, of a foot or more in thickness, are cleavable into plates an inch or less in thickness. On the faces of these plates are rarely faint traces of fossils, the chief of which is a Dicellocephalus, mixed with nodular concretions of from four to six inches in diameter, which are probably organisms altered by heat. Several specimens of the Dicellocephalus were found in a state of perfection sufficient to identify them. These are now in the State cabinet at Austin. This is on the borders of the azoic granite, where there has been an eruption and upheaval of other granite and igneous rocks at a later period, the heat of