238 Miscellaneous Notkes in Mineralogy^ Geology, ^c. 



I have embodied many new facts relative to the natural His- 

 tory, scenery and inhabitants of the Highlands of New-York 

 and New-Jersey, obtained by personal examination. 



15. The Globe had a beginning, 



Mr. Amos Eaton, lecturer on Geology and Botany at 

 Troy, Professor in the Castleton Institution, Sic. infers that 

 the earth is not eternal, because the ruins of its rocks in the 

 form of gravel, sand, &:c. being constantly borne dov/n by 

 the rains, torrents, Sic. to the sea and other low situations, 

 there ought by this time to be no " projecting rocks," not 

 one " naked cliiF," but all should have been " alluvial." 



By collecting and drying the sediment from the water of 

 the river Hudson, opposite to the city of Albany, during 

 three days of the great freshet of April, 1819, he found that 

 it amounted to a certain quantity for every quart of water ; 

 the quantity of water being duly estimated from the dimen- 

 sions of the channel and the rapidity of the current, Mr. 

 Eaton computes that twelve hundred tons of alluvial earth 

 passed in three days. 



16. Hill of Serpentine. 



Extract of a letter from Dr. William Atwater, dated West- 

 field, Mass. March 12, 1819. 



With this letter I send you some specimens of stone 

 which abound in this neighborhood. In the second num- 

 ber of your Journal of Science, &c. there is an account of 

 the different strata in the Southampton level leading to the 

 lead mine, in which the writer, Mr. Amos Eaton, mentions 

 a vein or quarry of serpentine rock between this town and 

 Russel. The dark coloured specimens are, I presume, 

 from the same quarry as the one to which he refers. The 

 green coloured specimens are from a mountain fifteen or 

 twenty miles distant. The mountain, or bluff, which is per- 

 haps as large as east rock at New-Haven, is wholly compos- 

 ed of this kind of stone or marble. 



The specimens mentioned above are very dark green 

 serpentine, with numerous patches and spots of talc, and 



