122 ECONOMICAL MINERALOGY. 



It may not be unimportant to observe, that in the neighborhood of this boring, brine springs 

 had been worked before the cliristian era ; and that the above is the only locahty of fossil salt 

 which is known in France.* 



In noticing the salt mines of Hallein, in Hungary, Beudant remarks : " We observed in the 

 midst of these clays, beds of salt sufficiently large, grey or reddish, and containing in some 

 places, pellets of argillaceous matter. We find especially fibrous gypsum, some veins of an- 

 hydrite, and beds of a brovra compact gypsum of a grey lustre and somewhat scaly fracture."t 



The account given of the salt springs of Worcestershire, in England, by an accurate ob- 

 server. Dr. Charles Hastings, applies in almost every important particular to the region around 

 the Onondaga springs. This author remarks, as others have done, that " wherever rock salt is 

 met with, sulphate of lime or gA^psum seems to be very generally discovered in mixture with 

 the earthy strata above it. In most parts of the world where these gj'pseous strata are found, 

 marine shells are mixed with them ; but this has not been discovered to be the case either in 

 Cheshire or in this county." 



Dr. Hastings gives the following section from the surface in the town of Droitwich : "First, 

 a stratum of mould, three feet deep ; then a stratum of red marl forty feet deep, which abounds 

 with water of a brackish nature. After that, a stratum of marl which extends for one hundred 

 and thirty feet. In this marl there are no springs of water ; it is quite drj^ but is penetrated 

 with perpendicular veins of gj^psum. At the distance of a hundred and thirty feet from the 

 commencement of the gjrpsum in the marl, we come to the strong brine, which rushes up to 

 the surface as soon as it is bored into. This brine is ten feet deep, and the rock salt is under 

 this river of brine."}; 



I liave introduced these notices of particular localities of rock salt, rallier than the general 

 ones contained in geological treatises, because the facts can be the more easily applied to the 

 case under examination. And it may be observed that the most prominent of these is the con- 

 stant associations of gypsum with the rock salt formation.'^ In this particular, the similarity 

 of the fonnation around the Onondaga lake appears to me to be fully established. About a 

 mile from S\Tacuse, on the railroad from that village to Split Rock quarrj', is a conglomerate 

 made up of pebbles of various sizes and colours, and firmly aggregated by an argillaceous ce- 

 ment. This stratum is tln-ec or four feet in thickness, and continues for some distance. In 

 the marsh about a mile and a half from SAa-acuse, is an extensive deposit of marl, similar to 

 that found in the immediate vicinity of Onondaga lake ; and large masses of calcareous tufa 

 are also found in tliis valley. 



Beyond this bed of marl are extensive beds of gypsvmi, of the several varieties wliich are 

 known to occur in Western New-York, viz. the lamellar, the fibrous, the dark coloured and the 

 earthy. The specimens of the fibrous variety are more beautiful than any which I have here- 



* Annales de Chimie et de Physique, XII. 48; or Repertory of Arts, Second Series, XXXVI, 186. 

 t Voyage Mmeralogiqtie ct Geologique en Hongrie pendant I'atmSe 1818. Par F. S. Beudant. I. 169. 

 X A Lecture on the Salt Springs of Worcestershire, (England.) with an Appendix, by Charles Hastings, M. D., F. G. S. 

 i) This is by no means confined to the anhydrite, as has been asserted, but includes also the hydrous gypsum exactly similar to 

 that found every where in the western part of this State. 



