SECRETARY'S REPORT. 155 



can be tested very easily by putting it into a cup or a tumbler, and 

 pouring' on a little dilute sulphuric or nitric acid, or even strong 

 vinegar, when, if it contains lime, it will immediately commence to 

 foam. It may also be said in refei-ence to some of the kilns for 

 burning lime, formerly in operation in the county, that more study 

 and research into the nature of the lime, would develop facts of 

 great importance. Some who have dug and burnt the stone, and 

 not finding it to slake very readily, or form so white and fine a 

 powder as the Eockland and Thomaston lime, have become dis- 

 couraged and abandoned the business, when, in fact, experiments 

 as to its nature and properties would establish rules for its suc- 

 cessful management. If lime — as is the case with that found at 

 Norridgewock — will not answer for mortar or cement, on account of 

 the presence of flint and slate, which prevents it forming a iiniform 

 mass if mixed with sand, it should be used for agricultural pur- 

 poses, as this is of no consequence if wanted for the soil only. In 

 my opinion it will not be many years before the Norridgewock 

 lime is extensively burnt and used for farming operations. 



Near Parlin's Pond, in No. 3, *7th range. Dr. Jackson discovered 

 a huge bed of fine graywacke, filled with an immense number and 

 variety of fossil shell impressions. In his third report, he says, 

 (p. 46) : "The rock is of a fine silicious variety, extremely com- 

 pact where the shells do not abound, but presenting the most per- 

 fect cast of marine shells I have ever seen. The width of the bed 

 could not be exactly determined, as it is in part concealed by the 

 soil ; but I measured it for fifty rods, which is but a small part of 

 its width. Among the fossils I obtained the following genera, 

 terebratulae, spiriferaj lutrunae and turritellee, beside which there 

 are several other indistinct or broken fossils, which it is more diflS- 

 cult to determine. From the direction of this rock it evidently 

 crosses Moose river and the head of Moosehead lake, and extends 

 to the banks of the Aroostook, where we discovered it last year, 

 and from it came all these numerous boulders and erratic blocks 

 containing fossil shells, which we find scattered so profusely over 

 the country, from the line above mentioned, to the outer islands of 

 the Penobscot bay, and at the mouth of the Kennebec river. The 

 distance to which masses, six or eight inches in diameter, have 

 been transported, is no less than one hundred and twenty-six miles 

 in a right line, while there are immense numbers of larger size 

 found scattered over the intervening space, and they become larger 

 as we approach this, their parent bed." 



