CHAPTER II. 



THE GEOLOGY OF THE LAKE SHORE SECTIONS. 



All along the lake shore from Eighteen Mile Creek, north 

 to Bav View, and south to the county line, there are 

 numerous exposures ot the strata described in the preceding 

 chapter, as well as others which lie above and below these. 

 The exposures are in the cliffs, which, with few exceptions, 

 front the lake, rising sometimes to a height of nearly a 

 hundred feet. The cliffs commonly rise with a vertical face 

 from the beach. Alany of them are washed by the waves 

 the year round, and consequently kept in a perpendicular or 

 even overhanging condition, while others experience the 

 cutting of the waves only during storms or in seasons of 

 unusually high water. In this latter case a talus of shale 

 fragments usually accumulates at the foot of the section, 

 and this not infrequently becomes a rich collecting ground 

 for the palaeontologist, for here the weathered out fossils 

 may be found in great numbers, and usually in a perfect 

 state of preservation. The stratigraphist, ho\vever, avoids 

 collecting from these natural "dump-heaps," or at least does 

 not attach much stratigraphic value to his collections, for he 

 finds in them a commingling of the fossils of the various beds 

 exposed in the section, a condition which is unfavorable to 

 the proper discrimination between successive faunas. 



The sections are bv no means of uniform height. This can 

 be best appreciated b}' the diagrammatic representation of 

 these sections given on Plate V. of the Geological Report of 

 the Fourth District of New York. In this plate Professor 

 Hall gives a semi-pictorial representation of the shore of 

 Lake Erie from Black Rock to Sturgeon Point, with the 

 omission of the eight miles of beach and low swamp-land 

 bet\veen Buffalo and Bay View (Comstock's tavern). By 

 reference to this plate it will be seen that the highest cliff is 

 just south of Eighteen Alile Creek, in the first section of the 

 "South Shore Clifts." 



