THE 



JOURNAL OF GEOLOGY 



JULY-AUGUST, 1904 



DESCRIPTION AND CORRELATION OF THE ROMNEY 

 FORMATION OF MARYLAND.^ 



CONDENSED DESCRIPTION OF THE ROMNEY FORMATION. 



The lower member of the Romney formation in Allegany county 

 is composed principally of fissile black shale, some of which weathers 

 to a yellowish or buff color on long exposure. In comparatively 

 fresh exposures, however, as in the railroad cuts at Twenty-first 

 Bridge, the shales are either black or rusty-brown after some weather- 

 ing. The black shales are shown to best advantage in these cuts, 

 although on the Williams Road, three and one-half miles southeast 

 of Cumberland, is perhaps the most nearly complete exposure of 

 this division with an approximate thickness of 512 feet. In the lower 

 part of some of these exposures are bands of very dark-colored thin 

 limestone. The lithological characters of these shales agree closely 

 with those of typical exposures of the Marcellus shales in New York 

 state, and in addition they contain such characteristic species as 

 Liorhynchus limitare (Vanuxem) and Agonitaites expansus (Van- 

 uxem). 



The second member of the Romney formation, the Hamilton beds, 

 has an approximate thickness of 1,100 feet, and is composed of shales 

 and sandstones. In recent exposures the shales, generally bluish 

 or bluish-gray in color, vary in composition from quite coarse arena- 

 ceous to those that are fine and argillaceous. The sandstones, 



I Published by permission of Dr. William Bullock Clark, state geologist of Mary- 

 land. The data upon which this paper is based will appear in detail in the forth- 

 coming Devonian volume of the Maryland Geological Survey. 

 Vol. XII, No. 5. 361 



