13 Geological Reports on the State of Neio York. 



of numerous plants, identical with those now growing in the vi- 

 cinity. There is a single mass on the bank of the creek, about 

 300 feet long by 50 wide and so on to 40 thick. It has numer- 

 ous apartments, and at the end are tufaceous petrifactions of logs 

 standing obliquely against a side hill : they are still very perfect, 

 retaining the forms of the shabby scales of the bark, the knots, 

 &c. There are large masses of tufa near Syracuse, and in Mar- 

 cellus and Camillus ai-e many calcareous petrifactions of leaves, 

 roots, and trunks of trees : such petrifactions are numerous near 

 Rochester and Ithaca ; and at the falls of Niagara and Genesee 

 they are incrusted with carbonate of lime from the running and 

 dashing waters. Near Chitteningo such appearances are numer- 

 ous, and a large trunk of a tree is conspicuous on the left hand, as 

 the traveller enters the village from the east ; it is imbedded in a 

 hill near its foot. Professor Beck found the petrified wood to con- 

 sist almost entirely of carbonate of lime, with small and variable 

 proportions of silica, alumina, and oxide of iron ; in some speci- 

 mens there were traces of vegetable niatter, and in others none.* 

 Water issuing from the superincumbent hills afforded to Professor 

 Beck, in 1000 parts, 998.06 of water, and 1.94 of carbonate and 

 sulphate of lime j still no sulphate of lime could be found in the 

 petrifactions. 



Paleontological Department, hy Timothy A. Conrad. 



This department has been organized since the former report, 

 and Mr. Conrad was detached from the geology of the third dis- 

 trict, for the purpose of fulfilling this duty, which is very impor- 

 tant to science, although it may not make so conspicuous a fig- 

 ure in the reports as some other departments. Mr. Conrad, whose 

 high qualifications for this duty are well known, has made it a 

 leading object to compare and identify as far as possible the for- 

 mations of the state of New York with those of Europe, at least 

 so far as to ascertain their geological equivalents. 



" There are some geologists who wish to establish in every island and 

 continent, a peculiar system of rocks, independent of other remote coun- 

 tries; but when we consider that in the earlier eras of our planet, the 

 temperature was uniform and the seas comparatively very shallow; should 



* We have seen in situ near Fredricksburg, Va., siliceous petrifactions of 

 trunks of trees, in which were ligneous fibres, not only not petrified, but retaining 

 their combustibility, while all around was stone, copying the original organization. 



