i82 An American Fruit-Farm 



becomes soluble only in centuries. The hills 

 which wall in the Lake Shore Valley along the 

 south (and this Valley may be used as a basis for 

 comparison with other favored fruit regions in 

 America) are, as I have said, based on sedimentary 

 rock filled with fossil shells of the Devonian and 

 Carboniferous ages. The entire body of hills is 

 raised land so that the layers of sedimentary rock, 

 composed largely of these shells, are some seven 

 hundred feet above the plane of the Valley. For 

 untold millions of years the waters from the 

 springs high among these hills have been seeping 

 through these thick layers of shells, dissolving 

 them and, flowing northward across the Valley, 

 both along the surface of streams and through 

 wide, subterranean rivers, have impregnated the 

 whole Valley with lime. Where this ooze of water 

 trickles over the rocks along the bluffs that face 

 the lake, the impure lime is deposited in fantastic 

 shapes. Only a few days ago, in company with two 

 friends, I was revisiting the largest of the gulches 

 that cut the hills from south to north and northwest. 

 This is known as Gage's Gulf and, lying partly in 

 New York, partly in Pennsylvania, runs some six- 

 teen miles, in all its turnings and windings, from 

 the crest of the hills, where it starts in a meadow 

 by the roadside, to its mouth, and discharges into 

 Lake Erie. All day we enjoyed its wonders of 

 formation, and fossils — animal and vegetable. In 

 the bed of the creek we picked up these vestiges, 

 millions of years old, washed down by the fierce 



