1889. | NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 179 
Kreischerville. It seems very similar to the material obtained 
by Mr. Merrill from the Long Island Cretaceous. 
Cretaceous Gravel near Prince’s Bay, Staten Island. 
In a ravine near Prince’s Bay is a large amount of white 
gravel, composed mainly of quartz, and intimately associated 
with an outcrop of kaolin. Mr. Hollick has recently discovered 
that this gravel contains numerous silicified fossils. They 
consist of a brachiopod mollusk, allied to Pentamerus; a 
cyathophylloid coral, perhaps Zaphrentis, a discoid mass, pro- 
bably a sponge, and several fragments less certainly recognizable. 
This is one of the most interesting discoveries recently made in 
our local geology, and is of much more than local importance, 
inasmuch as it affords valuable evidence towards establishing 
the origin of the formation known as the Yellow Gravel or 
Preglacial Drift. I have been especially interested in this 
latter formation for several years, as it has been a much-debated 
question whence came the yellow gravel and sand composing it, 
and from which it derives its name. There were difficulties in 
the way of accepting the hypothesis, advanced by several emi- 
nent authorities, that it came either from the northwest or 
southeast. After a careful survey of a large part of the region 
where it is found in New Jersey, I arrived at the conclusion, 
as long ago as 1883, that it bad been in large part derived from 
the erosion of Cretaceous strata containing gravel, outcropping 
in the vicinity, and that after erosion it had been colored by 
ferruginous waters.’ That this coloring is merely superficial 
may be seen by breaking the pebbles composing the gravel and 
noting the white interior portions. The discovery of these 
fossils in the Cretaceous gravel goes far towards strengthening 
this conclusion,—for it is a well-known fact that similar fossils 
occur in the Preglacial Drift, and we have them now from the 
Prince’s Bay Bluff and Todt Hill, Staten Island, as well as 
from all over southern Central New Jersey. The beds of white 
gravel must lie near the base of the Cretaceous system and form 
the exposures at Glen Cove, N. Y., and Camden, N. J. They 
are known to be of considerable thickness and extent; and as 
there is unmistakable evidence of some hundreds of feet of 
erosion from all this part of the country since the Cretaceous 
era, there is nothing extraordinary about the proposition. The 
problem still remains, however, where did these silicified fossils 
come from originally? We have traced them back one step 
further, from the Preglacial Drift to the Cretaceous gravels, 
1 TRANSACTIONS, IV., 33 (1884). 
