Remarks on the Rocks of New York. 121 
Arr. IX.—Remarks on the Rocks of New York; by Prof. C. 
TO PROFESSOR SILLIMAN, 
Tue opinion seems to be prevailing that the rocks of this section. 
of our country are chiefly transition. A great portion had been 
ranked among the secondary. For this there was a natural reason, 
viz. the horizontal position of the stratajand the general appearance 
of the rocks so diverse fron those of primitive countries ; especially, 
as the fossils were not understood. As early however as 1829, Prof. 
Vanuxem stated his conviction that these rocks are transition,* and 
in Bakewell’s Geology, republished in the same year, you remark in 
the “‘ Outline,” p. 55, upon the rocks of Lockport and Niagara, that 
‘there is a strong approximation to the transition character.” This 
is now well ascertained in relation to rocks much below those in their 
geological relations. Besides the evidence offered in this Journal for 
last January, by Dr. Hayes, of Buffalo, and in the Geological Report 
of this State to the Legislature last winter, I propose to present that 
which has occurred to me. ‘The subject was pressed upon my at- 
tention soon after my removal to this city last year, by considering 
the position of the coal mines in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and the 
strongly bituminous odor of the rocks in the calciferous slate of 
Eaton, and the appearance of bituminous shale in the strata above 
this. 
The dip of the strata towards the south over a great extent of 
this State and Ohio and the western part of Pennsylvania, would 
carry the saliferous rock of Eaton and several of his incumbent strata 
far beneath the rocks in Pennsylvania and Ohio, which have the 
same relative elevation above the sea. As we pass from Lake On- 
tario, south and west, strata after strata Jie upon each other in suc- 
cessive elevations, all having their dip towards the south, and with 
nearly the same inclination, Along the Genesee river it is one foot 
in eighty to one hundred feet. If we call it only one in a hundred, 
in fifty miles, which is less than the distance to the southern boundary 
of the State, the dip would place the rocks two thousand six hundred 
and forty feet or half a mile below their relative situation near Lake 
Ontario. 
* a Jour. Vol. xvi. p. 254. See also Bakewell’s Geology, 2d Am. Ed. 
” Vou. XXXUI.—No. 1. 16 
