226 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [may 21, 
UTICA. 
The Utica slates are black and thin bedded with interstrati- 
fied calcite layers and often pyrite. They have a low dip and a 
strong slaty cleavage, usually nearly parallel with the strike. 
Graptolites are frequent, otherwise fossils are not numerous. 
Mr. G.S. Stanton found a single specimen of Trzarthrus Beckw 
on the end of Willsboro’ Point, and Mr. van Ingen reports 
Triarthrus Beckii, Endoceras, Philodops and a small form of 
Strophomena alternata from the Essex shore. The Utica forms 
the Four Brothers Islands, rising up thirty to forty feet high 
on the southern one and cut by several dikes, The northern 
third of Willsboro’ Point is exclusively Utica, as is also the 
shore of Essex, forming an escarpment five or six feet high, of 
nearly horizontal layers, with interbedded denser ones, from 
Bluff Point to the south side of Whallon’s Bay. ‘These slates 
were ascribed by Emmons to the Hudson River stage, of 
which, however, we find no representative. 
QUATERNARY. 
The Quaternary comprises drift, delta deposits of sand and 
gravel, and post-glacial deposits of finer sand, blue and red clays. 
The drift has been frequently referred to in the course of this 
paper. The leading area fills in the valley between the west- 
ward dipping shore formations and the opposed strata along the 
Boquet. The hard pan or clay bottom beneath it produces a 
basin, so that to obtain water there is no need of deep well bor- 
ings, from which data of the underlying rock might be obtained. 
Inquiries at numerous dwellings in the drift-covered area be- 
tween Essex village and the railroad station elicited the fact 
that the wells ranged from forty to sixty feet deep, penetrating 
only gravel and coarse sand. This drift area extends in a prac- 
tically level plain, two to three miles wide, at an altitude of 
about 325 feet above lake level from the lakeside to the Boquet 
and from the southern Essex boundary northward to the bend 
near the mouth of the river. 
Judging from the fact that a cliff of Potsdam is seen under- 
lying this drift at the old Boquet Mill, where the plain ends in a 
steep hill running down to the river, it seems to me that the 
section of five miles along the road north of Essex, given by 
Emmons in the Geology of the 2d District, Plate VIII.,* repro- 
duced in section A. of the following figure would be more ac- 
curately represented as in section B. of the same figure. 
*Emmons in the same plate gives a nearly accurate shore section. 
