276 GEOLOGY OF OLD UAMPSHIRE COUNTY, MASS. 



Northlic'ld schist series extends across the State hue west of the village of 

 South Vernon aud where, across the brook, it rises in the hill back of 

 S. Titus's, at which place the road to the Lily Pond branches from the 

 Brattleboro road. The (luartzite dips for the most part to the east except 

 east of the Lily Pond, where a minor fold of considerable size occurs, 

 caused, by the sharp bend on the State line, and here the beds dip south. 

 Followed eastward it becomes more and more feldspatliic and the muscovite 

 is largely replaced by biotite, forming a completely gneissoid rock. It 

 is here not distinguishable from the feldspathic quartzite occurring east of 

 the West Northfield series, and described on page 282. (See " Petro- 

 graphical description," Nos. 1-4, p. 287.) 



The Vernon limestone. — On the Lily Pond road, above mentioned, and 

 just east of E. G. Scott's house, occm-s a band of limestone. It is a coarse- 

 granular limestone, highly crystalline, of light color, containing some 

 garnet, hornblende, and green mica. It contains what seem to be distinct 

 traces of corals and crinoids, and in every way closely resembles the Ber- 

 nardston bed, with which I identify it without hesitation. Especially do 

 the weathered surfaces show a peculiai-, conglomerate-like structure common 

 at Bernardston. Large, rounded tVagments of a line-grained, white lime- 

 stone are cemented by a coarser and more highly crystalline limestone; the 

 latter in larg-e amount, as if the rock had been brecciated by pressure and 

 the fragments then rounded by percolating waters and recemented. This 

 bed is exposed about 30 rods, and may have a thickness of as many feet, 

 but its boundaries are not well exposed. Toward the west it grades on the 

 strike into a calcareous hornblende-schist, and above that, to the south, 

 tlu-ough an actinolite-quartzito into a (piartzite abounding in large garnets 

 and blotches of a greenish mica, while below it jiasses into a very coarse, 

 thick bed of hornblende-schist. (See "Petrographical description," Nos. 

 11-13, }). 2!)0.) The whole series is inclosed in the gneissoid quartzite. 

 This limestone is considered by Prof C. H. Hitchcock to be an Archean 

 limestone in Bethlehem gneiss.^ 



The mica-schist and hornhlendic beds. — Resting on the basal quartzite and 

 dipping from it with low angle to the south, southeast, and east successively, 

 as it folds around conformabh' with it in the long distance from Bernardston 

 to South Vernon, is a broad area of mica-schist with several bands — probably 



' Geology of New Hampshire, Vol. II, 1877, p. 430. 



