57 



Though it is difficult to trace the axes of elevation as they 

 traverse the primary ridges, on account of the frequency of the 

 igneous injections in the gneiss producing much contortion in the 

 strata, yet viewing the topography of Scott's Mountain in con- 

 nexion with the more regular dips which it discloses, we cannot 

 resist the impression, that it owes its elevation to at least two 

 considerable anticlinal axes. 



One of these would seem to range along its southeastern ridges, 

 passing not far from Oxford Furnace, and southwestward be- 

 tween the Lopatcong and Merrill's brook, afiecting the limestone 

 north of the former stream. The other observes a more north- 

 western line, and is probably connected with the elevation of the 

 primary ridge, called the Marble Mountain, at the Delaware. At 

 the southeastern base of Scott's Mountain, we lind the limestone 

 assuming the synclinal structure in the valley of the Pohatcong; 

 but not every where symmetrically, as it gives evidence, especially 

 as we approach the Delaware, of being in some places actually 

 inverted along its southwestern border. 



It is difficult, indeed, to find the rocks any where dipping to 

 the northwest, throughout the whole distance from the Pohatcong, 

 across their strike, to the base of Marble Mountain. "Jhis indi- 

 cates, in the Kittatinny Valley, that those belts of the stratum 

 lying to the northwest of each anticlinal axis, instead of assuming, 

 as we would expect, a northwestern dip, have been so forcibly 

 upheaved in that direction as to have been tilted in many cases 

 beyond the vertical plane, and made to fold over, with a south- 

 east dip, upon the southeastern dipping beds belonging to the next 

 northwestern axis. Connected, most probably, with some early 

 movement of elevation in the strata around Jenny Jump, there 

 occurs an interesting and rather unusual phenomenon, in the nar- 

 row belt of limestone at the base of the mountain, immediately to 

 the southeast of the little village of Hope. We allude here to the 

 uncommon structure of the rock, which is at this place a true 

 conglomerate, made up entirely of pebbles and rotted fragments, 

 some of them being many inches in diameter, which, like the 

 paste imbedding and cementing them, consist exclusively of the 

 same materials as the rest of the blue limestone formation, in 

 which this conglomerate occurs as one of the interposed beds. 



The same formation embraces, in Pennsylvania, a similar 



