68 [Senate 



gravel, and the stratas passed through in boring are fine sand and gra- 

 vely the lower stratas of the gravel are agglutinated to a considera- 

 ble extent. 



The wells at Salina are of about 170 feet in depth, and yield wa- 

 ter of SO degrees of strength; and those of Liverpool are 80 feet in 

 depth and yield water of 81 degrees of strength. 



The stratas passed in boring in these wells last mentioned are clay, 

 rock and sand. 



The strongest water lies in a northerly direction from the Syracuse 

 wells first named, and approaches near the surface in progressing 

 north from the first well, as will be seen by what is stated above. 



The villages of Syracuse, Salina, Liverpool and Geddes, skirt 

 the head of the Onondago lake, almost in the form of a crescent, 

 and no doubt will at some future period, not far distant, form one 

 great city. 



An examination of this lake, in connection with the salt wells, 

 led me to the conclusion that the lake has resulted from the dissolv- 

 ing of a strata of salt rock beneath the surface of the earth, and 

 that what once formed the surface of the earth now forms the bot- 

 tom of the lake. 



In company with the State superintendent of the Salines, Thomas 

 Spencer, Esq. and the State inspector of salt made at the Salines, 

 Henry W. Allen, Esq. I made an excursion upon the lake during 

 the month of August last, and sounded it with a line in the vicinitv 

 of the salt wells. We found the lake for a few rods very shallow, 

 from six inches in depth gradually increasing to three feet in depth, 

 to where the bottom descended quite abruptly for a few feet to the 

 depth of seventy feet: the bottom is of earth, and this abrupt preci- 

 pice in the water is of the same material. 



The nearest well to this sounding, which is one that is now in the 

 process of boring, has been sunk to the depth of 207 feet; the strata 

 of the first few feet is of soil resulting from decomposed vegetation; 

 next a strata ol marl of some six feet in thickness; then a thin strata 

 of soil, and below this a body of tough elastic clay of 173 feet in 

 thickness; nextj nine feet rock composed of fine gravel cemented 

 with gypsum; next, one foot of tough clay mixed with pebble stones; 

 next, four feet clay, when the auger struck the rock again, and in 

 which the workmen are now boring. It is this strata of clay which 

 I think has settled down, and its surface now forms the bottom of 

 the lake, and its fracture the earth precipice which I have mentioned. 

 This lake is about six miles long and one and a half mile wide, and 

 is drained by Seneca river. 



The water of these wells is so strong that it is as profitable to 

 raise the water and evaporate it; as it would be to raise the salt rock 

 and dissolve it, and afterwards evaporate the solution, as very little 

 of the fossil salt can be used without being first dissolved and the so- 

 lution evaporated. 



It seems evident to my mind that the saline properties of the wa- 

 ter of the wells at the Onondaga Salines, is derived immediately 

 from fossil salt, and that the deposit of this mineral must be near by. 



