Til APPENDIX. 



across the axis of elevation, the cuts continue in the lighter 

 colored shales and harder layers, which are at places seen contorted 

 and dipping locally in different directions. As the road curves 

 around to the northwestward, however, it crosses the strike of 

 the strata less and less obliquely, so that, although a descending 

 grade, it rapidly passes from (geologically) lower to higher 

 strata, as it turns more nearly in the direction of the dip. 



I found Hamilton types of fossils for a mile or more below the 

 springs, but beyond this my examinations in that direction were 

 not sufficient to determine exactly where the Hamilton ends, in 

 going down the valley. To the westward, the harder less shaly 

 beds were noticed to increase, but no very abrupt or strongly 

 marked lithological changes were observed near the bases of the 

 mountains, until about four to four and a half miles below the 

 springs, by the curve of the road, near which point some whitish, 

 rather coarse sandstone, at places containing pebbles of white 

 ■quartz, was seen along the sides of the mountains, in rather massive 

 ibeds, dipping at a high angle to the northwestward. Some half 

 mile or less further on, in a neai-ly northwestward direction, the 

 ■dip brings this sandstone down to the bottom of the valley. A 

 -deep cut at this place, at the entrance of a tunnel some forty 

 to fifty feet above the sandstone, penetrates hard bluish-gray, 

 more or less gritty beds, alternating with softer crumbling red- 

 dish, and, in places, greenish strata, in which argillaceous matter 

 seems to predominate.* I saw no fossils here, excepting frag- 

 ments of black vegetable matter, but I was impressed with the 

 resemblance of these beds, and the red clays some of them form 

 by disintegration, to some of those seen in the Catskill Moun- 

 tains of New York, formerly referred to the Old Red Sandstone, 

 but which, since Col. Jewett's discovery of Chemung fossils high 

 in those mountains, have been mainly included in the Chemung 

 group of the iSTew York Devonian. 1 have the impression, how- 

 ever, that the beds penetrated by this excavation are at least as 

 high in the series as the Old P^ed, or possibly somewhat higher, as 

 there must be, owing to the dip here, a very considerable thick- 

 ness of strata between them and the Hamilton group seen further 

 up the valley. Being at the time in rather feeble health, I did 

 not attempt to make the necessary examinations to ascertain the 

 exact limits of the groups here, and only allude to the rocks seen 

 in this cut, on account of their close similarity in lithological 

 characters, to those containing the plants described in this paper 

 from Lewis's tunnel, about six miles to the southeast of the 

 springs; especially as the reverse of dip, to the southeastward 

 from the springs to the last-mentioned locality, would also indi- 



* It is probable that these beds and the whitish sandstone seen below 

 them, owing to the general inclination of all the rocks here, rise to the 

 summits of the mountains, some miles further eastward, on the west side 

 of the valley, and nearer the springs, than where I saw them. 



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