1893. | NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 18 
Staten Island Rapid Transit Railroad during the present year. 
There are also scattered through the till and in the modified 
drift beyond, fragments and concretions of ferruginous sand- 
stone or shale, which represent the smaller pieces of clay, marl 
or sand hardened by oxidation of included ferruginous waters 
or by the accumulation of limonite around the exterior in the 
form of a shell. These fragments are exceedingly characteristic 
constituents of the drift material wherever it occurs to the 
south of former cretaceous areas, and once recognized could 
afterwards hardly be mistaken for anything else, and as they 
frequently contain well-known cretaceous leaves and mollusks 
their derivation cannot be doubted. Thus far I have failed to 
find any of these on Staten Island or Long Island which could 
be referred to the tertiary. 
Such, in brief, are the facts as they occur on these islands, 
and the interpretations which have been applied to them. 
On Martha’s Vineyard I found the conditions to be similar in 
all respects, but in a more clearly defined and concentrated form. 
The description of these conditions is so graphically and ex- 
haustively given in Prof. Shaler’s report that it would be super- 
fluous for me to reiterate them. It is sufficient to say that there 
is a similar ridge of hills, consisting of a superstructure of con. 
torted clay strata, capped and flanked to the north with till, 
while to the south there is a similar region of modified, water 
assorted drift. The escarpment of Gay Head is unique inas- 
much as it is the only portion of the moraine where we have an 
almost sheer section exposed from summit to tide level. The 
elevation is no greater and in fact not so great as that of many 
of the morainal hills on Long Island, and we need merely to 
imagine Long Island separated into isolated portions, by north 
and south erosion channels, in order to reproduce Gay Head in- 
definitely. In fact, at several localities, Glen Cove in particular, 
it may be actually seen in miniature at the present time. 
Under the circumstances I fail to see that any other explana- 
tion to account for the structure of the entire morainal fringe 
throughout the coastal region is as consistent with the facts as 
the one here advanced. Further than this an examination of 
the Martha’s Vineyard rocks shows them to have been derived 
largely from cretaceous and post-cretaceous strata. Aside from 
the clays themselves, everywhere the characteristic ferruginous 
sandstone and shale fragments and concretions may be found, 
many of them containing fossils which can be readily identified. 
The majority of these are of cretaceous origin, in fact all which 
I collected, representing both flora and fauna, are of this forma- 
tion, although the paleontological material collected by other 
