* 
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84» Geological Survey of the State of New York: 
vium of sand and rocks, and the rich limestone, slate, and shale 
lands to the west, which are well known as exceedingly fertile. 
This portion of the county is celebrated for its herds of cattle 
and horses, and its production of wheat. The difficulties hereto- 
fore experienced for want of a ready communication with the 
large markets, has prevented it from advancing as rapidly in 
wealth and population as other portions of the state, but the con- 
struction of the Black river canal, will remove this obstacle to ils 
prosperity ; and it is destined to compete successfully with its 
sister counties on the Erie canal, in its agricultural productionsand 
mineral resources. “The rocks of the county are the primary, 
the Potsdam sandstone, the fucoidal layers, (‘which are inter- 
posed betwen the calciferous sandrock and the Mohawk limestone, 
and are so abundant in the valley of the Mohawk,’) the Mohawk 
limestone, (at Boonville, forty feet thick, and quarried for the 
locks of the canal,) which lies under the bird’s-eye limestone, 
but the latter being absent in Lewis county, the J'renton lime- 
stone succeeds, increasing in thickness from thirty feet at the Mo- 
hawk to three hundred feet, at Copenhagen, generally divided by 
cracks or fissures, that have a twofold direction; one system be- 
ing north and south, and the other east and west ; the black slate, 
the Frankfort slate, and the shales of Pulaski. All these strati- 
fied rocks except the first two, pursue a uniform north and south 
direction through the county.” 
The opinions entertained by the geologist of the fourth dis- 
trict, Mr. Hall, in his report for 1838, p. 291, and in his report of 
1840, pp. 393, 394, and 452, 453, concerning the rocks of this 
portion of the state, their age and relative position in the scale, 
are quite different from each other. The lithological character of 
the New York rocks has occasioned doubt and perplexity in the 
minds of many observers, and the labor expended to resolve these 
doubts, has heretofore resulted in no clearer view of the case, but 
served rather to increase the darkness; and where we have com- 
pared them with the rocks of foreign countries, according 1 
English or French classifications, the anomalies were found 00 
great to permit our regarding them as the equivalent of either sy 
tem. Mr. Hall appeared satisfied, however, with the conclusion 
expressed in his former report, because it rested in part upon t 
evidence afforded by the “ organic remains ? but since then, the 
same kind of evidence has convinced him that these rocks ale 
