Pmoceedixgs of the Farmers' Club. 603 



NEW JEESEY GEEEIs" SAXD. 



Tlie belt in which this remarkable fertilizer is found is not wide. 

 Draw upon the map a straight line from the first to the second Ameri- 

 can city. That line will, from the point where it touches the shore 

 of Karitan bay, till it crosses the Delaware, run over or near a marl 

 bed. The strip is somewhat wider on the jSTew York than on the 

 Philadelphia side of the State, but on an average the width of country 

 in which green sand is found is ten miles. There are three beds or 

 deposits of green sand, each different from the other, and of a different 

 geological history. It is a weird and seemingly fabulous story, as 

 obscurely spelled in sand hills and mud banks, in the margin lines of 

 old ocean3,/in vast stretches of subterranean kingdoms of dimness and 

 silence, once rife with vegetable and animal existence, now sunk in 

 the perpetual stillness of a geological grave. 



When and how the upheavals took place ; whether the giant force 

 was volcanic or celestial ; how long the first depression was in pro- 

 gress ; when the down motion ended, and the crust slowly swelled 

 up again from its ocean bath ; the intervgl between the first and the 

 second plunge ; and, above all, the efiect of these changes on the 

 vegetable and breathing life which had sprung into existence during 

 the upheaval ; all these are nuts for the hammer of the geologist, 

 and themes for poets' visions. For us, as students of agricultural 

 science, it is enough to know that by three dips of the mainland 

 beneath tide-water line there liave been made three banks or beds of 

 green sand. These beds are all neai' the surface in all parts of the 

 strip which I have indicated, so near that the streams which run east 

 and southeast into the ocean, or west into the Delaware, cut these 

 beds, and show green sand often for many miles along their banks. 

 In studying these formations, I have found three modes of inquiry 

 pertinent : First, in visiting a marl pit or digging, what results do 

 ordinary observation yield us ? We see that in many places near the 

 creek a bank of gravel and loam from three to nine feet thick is removed 

 when the marl bed is stripped. The upper layer is, in most cases, of 

 the color of chocolate cake ; this crust or strip is seldom over four 

 feet thick, and is called copperas, or poisonous marl, or rotten stone. 

 It has so much copperas in it that, spread on the surface of a field, it 

 will kill vegetation. But this can be taken out by mixing it with 

 quick-lime. Then comes the bed of true or i)ure marl. The spaders 

 cut it with long, spoon-shaped spits. It is so firmly bedded that, carrying 



