280 DR. THOMAS STERRY HUNT ON THE 
the Lehigh river, portions of two intermediate formations. One of these, marked by red- 
colored sandstones, conglomerates and slates, appears to be the same with the Upper 
Taconic or Cambrian belt ; which has been traced by H. D. Rogers, Mather, Emmons, Logan 
and the writer, with some interruptions, from New Jersey to Canada, along the great Appa- 
lachian valley. The other is an impure black earthy limestone, becoming in parts a soft, 
thinly bedded flag-stone, which was seen lying, at moderate angles, above the blue lime- 
stone of the valley, not far from Copley, and was then supposed’to belong to a different 
series. It is apparently the same with the Trenton beds recognized by Prof. Prime in that 
vicinity,’ * as mentioned below (§ 34). À 
§ 32. We have noted the evidence of a stratigraphical break between the slates of the 
great valley and the overlying Levant, (Oneida), sandstone in the Kittatinny Mountain, and 
have shown that the conglomerates of the latter include numerous pebbles derived alike 
from the underlying Primal, Auroral and Matinal rocks. If now we turn to the central 
valleys we find, as already stated, no evidence of any stratigraphical break ; but a passage 
downwards from the Oneida sandstone to the underlying Loraine and Utica slates. We 
still, however, find in these sandstones similar conglomerates to those of the Kittatinny 
range. This is well seen in Jack’s Mountain, on the eastern border of the Kishacoquillas 
valley, where the Levant division is described by Rogers as consisting in its lower part 
of 400 feet of sandstone ; of which he says, it contains “ numerous pebbles of white quartz, 
of Matinal slate, and of the harder Primal strata, and is really a conglomerate.” The upper 
member of the Levant, which is still thicker, is also a conglomerate, holding in parts quartz- 
pebbles, in addition to which, “ flat lamps and pebbles of red shale occur throughout the 
whole mass.’+ The pebbles of these conglomerates, which I have examined in situ, have 
evidently nothing in common with the fossiliferous strata below them, but are derived 
from older rocks, like those of the Kittatinny valley, and include large quantities of the 
characteristic red shales which we have already noticed. 
§ 33. The thickness of the Auroral limestones in the great valley is less than farther 
west, being, according to Chance, about 3,000 feet on the Susquehanna ; while at Bethlehem 
and Allentown, in Lehigh county, they measure about 2,000, according to Prime, who 
thinks their maximum thickness there may be 2,500 feet. 
These Auroral limestones, with their immediately associated schists and limonites, 
have been carefully studied by Prime in the county just named, and are described by him 
in Reports D. and D. 2, of the second geological survey of Pennsylvania. Schistose layers, 
with limonite, are there occasionally intercalated in the limestone, but the principal bodies 
of clay, or decayed schist, holding this ore, are, according to this observer, found at two 
horizons, the one near the summit and the other at the base of the limestone, between it 
and the underlying quartzite ; which, also, includes in this region schistose bands with 
hydrous micas, limonite, and occasional layers of red hematite. 
§ 34. These Auroral limestones and shales were, as we have seen, supposed by Rogers 
to be the equivalents of the New York series from the base of the Calciferous to the 
summit of the Birdseye and Black-River divisions; the Trenton limestone proper being, 
according to him, represented in the eastern area only by some beds of argillaceous 


* Hunt, Second Geol. Survey of Penn., Report E., p. 215. 
+ Rogers, Geol. of Penn., Vol. I., p. 473. 

