Transe NV: Ac. Sch. 30 | LVov. 19, 
topography, the precipitous walls and angular forms, displayed by the 
lake-bottom, seemed to indicate the widening out or excavation of a 
fissure, perhaps along a fault, and the damming up of the basin by a 
mass of moraine material. 
Although the action of ice, as a most powerful agent of disruption 
of thinly bedded sandstones and conglomerates, was most decidedly 
marked, both in the Shawangunk and the Catskills, nevertheless the 
separation of the huge loosened blocks of rock, now forming the brow 
of the escarpment, was evidently in most cases of much more recent 
date, slowly effected by the gradual widening of the joints by atmos- 
pheric waters, the removal and undermining of the soft shales which 
lie beneath the conglomerate, and the sliding of the ponderous masses 
down the slope. 
Dr. N. L. Britron then remarked on the discovery by Mr. 
ARTHUR Ho.tick and himself, of 
LEAF-BEARING SANDSTONES ON STATEN ISLAND, NEW YORK. 
The locality is at the southern end of Staten Island, at the base of 
a bluff, facing toward the Bay. The blocks of ferruginous sandstone, 
in which the leaf impressions were noticed, lie scattered along the 
beach, between tide-marks, and are mingled with pebbles and boulders 
of many kinds of metamorphic and sedimentary rocks, and with dia- 
base ; these have been washed out of the bluff which here marks the 
most southern extension of the great terminal moraine along the 
Atlantic coast. This fact lends an additional interest to the locality. 
The sandstone is accompanied by a ferruginous conglomerate, and 
was not found in place, but presents the appearance of having been 
thrown up on the shore, the fragments torn from a sub-aqueous out- 
crop. The leaf impressions noticed were but fragmentary, and in- 
sufficient for proper determination ; it is hoped that further search 
will reveal more perfect specimens. Impressions of twigs occur in 
great abundance in the rock, but little regarding the character of the 
plants which formed them can be learned from this source. 
The occurrence of similar fossiliferous sandstones on the beaches 
about Glen Cove, L. I., and vicinity, has been known for some time. 
There they are found in precisely the same position as at the locality 
above described, and are associated with extensive beds of fire-clay, 
“kaolin,” etc. The Tottenville station is not immediately on these 
clays, but they are found near by in several directions. That the 
two places mark outcrops of the same geological formation, and prob- 
ably approximately the same strata, is almost certain. 
The physical structure of the Glen Cove series is exactly parallel 
