230 Geological and Mineralogical JVotices. 



Art. II. — Geological and Mineralogical JVotices; by Oliver P. 

 Hubbard, M. D. Professor of Chemistry, Mineralogy, and Geol- 

 ogy, in Dartmouth College. 



TO PROFESSOR SILLIMAN. 



Dear Sir, — Enclosed are some observations, made two years 

 since, during an excursion in the northern part of the State of New 

 York, which are at your service, should you think them worthy of 

 being refcorded. 



At Boonville, Oneida County, N. Y., the underlying rock of the 

 country is the transition limestone, which has been heretofore de- 

 scribed in its extent and outlines by Prof. Eaton, and I only wish to 

 mention its appearance and character at this one point in the line of 

 its direction from Trenton Falls to Lake Ontario. The surface, 

 when the soil is removed, is found smooth, as if worn by attrition, 

 but which may be owing to an equable disintegration produced by 

 causes in constant action. Throughout the soil and on its surface 

 are scattered large, thin, flat curvilinear masses of the same rock, 

 which are also worn smooth. The rock is burned extensively for 

 lime — is very hard, and being stratified in layers of moderate thick- 

 ness, is easily quarried. 



In the cliffs of the river banks, the layers are of variable thickness — 

 when affected by the weather, they are quite thin, broken into small 

 irregular blocks, and generally they are separated by a thin layer of 

 argillaceous earth, like mortar in a wall. The upper beds appear en- 

 tirely filled with petrifactions, crinoidea, terebratula;, &.c. interstrati- 

 fied occasionally with others, which contain no organic remains. 

 These facts, with some other interesting features, may be conven- 

 iently observed on a stream in Leyden, Lewis Co., (about three miles 

 from Boonville,) called " Dry Sugar River." About a mile and a 

 half from its junction with the Black river, it is compressed into a 

 narrow, irregular, rocky passage, and makes a cascade of sixty feet 

 or more into an expanded basin below — and at high water runs with 

 a full channel to its mouth. The banks from the basin are probably 

 eighty or one hundred feet high, and continuously form the western 

 limit of the great valley of the Black river, which here gradually 

 slopes on the west side of Dry Sugar river to an elevation of thirty 

 or forty feet, and on the eastern suddenly declines to nearly the level 

 of the water. At the common height of the stream, (as at the time 

 of my visit,) there is not water sufficient to cover the whole channel 

 from the fall to its mouth., and at halfway between the two, the stream 



