101 
these from these rocks, without in the least affecting their 
concrete consistence, or injuring the cohesion of the mass. 
The cementing materials are, in fact, as anticipated, largely 
or chiefly made up of soluble or opaline Silica. This is 
claimed by the author, as proving that, as in the Hastern 
Virginia and North Carolina Coal basins, these New Jersey and 
Connecticut beds were accompanied by abundant vegetation. 
The angular forms of the granules, is claimed to disprove sea- 
beach or wind-blown origin. The theory is presented, that the 
medium of deposition of the New Jersey and Connecticut 
systems, was an immense elevated fresh-water lagoon or lake, 
which received in both cases from fluviatile systems corres- 
ponding exactly to those now in action, but immensely 
greater in power and volume, the material eroded from Alpine 
mountains, corresponding in New Jersey to the present 
Highlands. The New Jersey beds, were deposited, almost 
horizontally, on the N. W. slopes, and the Connecticut on 
the Eastern slopes. As Dana suggests, there must have 
been continuous, or more probably intermittent subsidences 
during the whole immense period. In these subsidences the 
coasts of the basin must have participated. 
The trap beds were formed, like the five Coal seams in the 
Deep River Basin in North Carolina, during epochs of 
elevation above the water, and were followed by renewed 
subsidences, at the West End of the New Jersey Railroad cut 
through the Palisades, the author recognizes sedimentary beds 
overlying the trap which are mineralogically identical there- 
with, and which are so regular that they must have been 
deposited from water flowing S. E. over the previously consoli- 
dated trap, and were afterwards themselves metamorphosed, 
consolidated and crystallized, by permeation of hot solutions 
exuding from the underlying mass. Close examination has 
detected bedding and lamination throughout the whole mass of 
the Palisades, and the author has been forced to the conviction 
that this whole range is sedimentary and metamorphic. The 
second range of trap in New Jersey however, (First or Newark 
Mountain) may be, in places, true eruptive trap. The 
Hoboken Serpentine has been found also by him, particularly 
