110 



geology, would require us to go aside into some of the adjoining 

 States, where many of the phenomena essential to the inquiry 

 are best beheld, and to take more ample latitude in some descrip- 

 tions of a speculative kind, than is compatable with the design 

 and scope of the present work. I shall restrict myself, therefore, 

 in this place to a concise examination of a few points only, con- 

 nected with the origin and present position of the Appalachian 

 rocks. 



The previous descriptions embracing but the five lowermost 

 members of the series and a subdivision of the eighth in the 

 ascending order, it is necessary for the discoverer to extend his 

 researches into the adjoining State of Pennsylvania to behold the 

 rest of that enormous group of strata, whose elevation from the 

 bed of what I have ventured to term the Appalachian Sea, gave 

 to a large part of the eastern half of our continent nearly its pre- 

 sent configuration. 



He will then perceive, in the first place, two important forma- 

 tions, absent from the series, as it is developed in Sussex and 

 Warren, but of great thickness and vast range in other parts of the 

 Appalachian chain. These occupy a geological position between 

 the top of the red shale and sandstone rocks. Formation V., and 

 the bottom of the fossiliferous limestone of Formation VIII. The 

 lowest of these, Formation VI., is a bluish limestone, very analo- 

 gous in aspect and composition to that which ranges between the 

 Wallpack Bend and New York. The next, Formation VII., 

 whose true place, when all are present, is between these two 

 limestones, is a coarse white sandstone, of very distinctive 

 features. 



Above the fossiliferous limestone of the Wallpack Bend, or lower 

 member of Formation VIIL, rest the olive and brownish slates of 

 Formation VIIL, forming a stratum of great thickness, which 

 extends over a belt of many miles in breadth northwestward 

 from the Delaware. 



Pursuing the same ascending order, and tracing the rocks in the 

 same northwest direction to the Coal Measures of the Wyoming 

 basin, we meet next with the red shales and argillaceous red 

 sandstones of Formation IX. 



Overlying these are the white and gray siliceous sandstones 



