GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY. 73 



of considerable size appeur in clay schist. The conglom- 

 erate is seen by the side of the old road leading from the 

 Coventry and Troy road toward Newport, some half a 

 mile easterly, where both water worn and angular frag- 

 ments are mixed together. The cut 269, vol. I. of Vt. 

 Geological Report, page 449, exhibits the strata for some 

 distance on both sides of the conglomerate. Some of the 

 serpentine in the Missisquoi Valley, as at South Troy and 

 Westfield, seems not, in some instances, to have been per- 

 fectly formed. At other places it is as perfect and beauti- 

 ful as any beds found elsewhere in the state. Most of the 

 steatite contains fragments of quartz, which injure its value 

 so that it has not l)een quarried for useful purposes, at 

 least, to any considerable extent. 



The rocks in the central and eastern part of the count}' 

 are upper Helderberg limestone, hornblende schist, 

 sienite, granite and gneiss. In larg^ sections, the first 

 three are singularly interstratified, with frequent veins of 

 cjuartz. In many places the strata change every few inch- 

 es from lime to clay schist and hornblende. The lime- 

 stone is predominant, and is often io filled with iron pyri- 

 tes, that it is very rapidly losing its cohesiveness, and is 

 converted into soil. This is equally true of some of the 

 clay schists. Both the clay and hornblende schists contain 

 several portions of lime and aid in forming new soil, as 

 both in places rapidly disintegrate. It is doubtless this fact, 

 as Dr. Hitchcock informs, that gives the soil of the coun- 

 ty its excellent "agricultural capabilities. Those parts of 

 the state, " the most fertile, are just the places, where lime 

 is most abundant and decomposable." This is a treasure 

 which Providence has hidden in the earth and provided for 

 its elimination at the right time, and quantity, and it is of 

 far more value, in my estimation, than all the other subter- 

 ranean Avealth of the state, yet I had no suspicion of its 

 existence, till at a late stage of the survey, excepting on the 

 west side- of the Green Mountains." The reason for the 

 last remark was, that he did not visit this county, till the 

 latter part of the time he was in the field, w^hen the writer 



