20 Geology, &c. of the Connecticut. 
feet deep. Both the cave and the fissure are in an immense 
mass of pudding stone with scarcely any thing like stratifica- 
tion throughout ; and this is incumbent upon a soft, decom- 
posable, argillaceous sandstone slate. ‘The disintegration 
of this slate, either by the waters of the lake above des- 
cribed, or by simple exposure to the vicissitudes of the cli- 
mate, ‘has probably caused this enormous stratum of con- 
glomerate to fall partially down and thus to form the cave 
and the fissure. 
Favourable situation of Yale Colieze as a School of Mine- 
ralogy and Geology. 
It is a curious circumstance, that this Institution should 
have been fixed by its founders, who must have been alto- 
gether unacquainted with geology, at the very focus of 
most of the Wernerian rock formations. It stands at the 
southern extremity of the secondary region of the Connec- 
ticut; and had experienced geologists searched the whole 
of N ew Eogiaid. + they could not have -: a more eligible 
ue for a geological and mineralogical school. It is 
a fortunate coincidence of favourable acekdenth, that 
re first mineral cabinet in the United States should have 
been deposited in Yale College, before there was much 
known concerning the interesting nature of the surrounding 
country. 
The geological ‘Pate at Yale could, even from his 
lecture room,* point out most of the rock formations 6f the 
e: He could veer the attention of his pupils to the 
plain around them, as.alluvium ; and to the hills of Wood- 
bridge and Milford, as exhibiting interesting deposites of 
diluvium. On the north they would see the striking sec- 
ondary greenstone eminences of Bast and West Rock ; 
on the west, hills of primitive greenstone. In this same di- 
rection, only four or five miles distant, he might point them 
to the West-Haven chlorite slate, to the Woodbridge argil- 
lite, to the Milford werd antique and serpentine, and a little 
yond, to the mica slate. A few rods to the north, or 
east, they might see the old ‘aa sandstone and the green- 
* The cabinet which is in the third story and in 
the lectures are given commands a view “of a andi ater hills. 
