Miscellanies. 207 



4. Alluvial Deposits of the JVLohawk. 

 Extractor a letter iVoni Mr. C. H. Tomlinson to the Editor, dated 



" ScHENECTA-DT, April, 1832. 



" Dear Sir — I herewith send you specimens of a deposit of leaves 

 which are found ten or twelve feet below the surface of the flats or 

 alluvial banks of the Mohawk River at this place. These, with ma- 

 ny other specimens, some of them one and a half feet square and six 

 or eight inches thick, were washed out of a deep hole made in the 

 Erie Canal during the great freshet in March last ; when the river 

 broke over the canal banks, three miles above this city, and came 

 down till it was stopped by the high ground on which the city is 

 built. It then rose high enough to break over the canal banks and 

 return to the river. The hole spoken of above was about twenty 

 feet below the surface of the flats across which the canal runs. Judge 

 De Graff of this place, tells me, that in digging a well some years 

 ago, about a quarter of a mile from this spot, he dug through the 

 same deposit of leaves. It was more than six inches thick. I am 

 informed by another person who is familiar with the river, that at low 

 water the same deposit may be seen in the bank of the river, a few 

 hundred yards from the place out of which these specimens were 

 washed." 



Remarks. — Every such deposit is interesting, as giving us the 

 means of comparing things that were with those that are. These 

 masses of leaves are perfectly combustible, burning with bright flame 

 and much smoke, smelling like that of recent dry leaves. They are 

 enveloped by a fine black river mud, exactly like that which forms 

 the sediment of the Mohawk at the present time. 



Since receiving Mr. Tomlinson's letter, we have visited the spot 

 from which the leaves were taken, and no one who sees the place, 

 can doubt that it was once the upper surface, although it is now lower 

 than the bed of the river. — Ed. 



P. S. October 11, 1832. — Observing, recently, some excavations 

 going on upon the Genesee River, at Angelica, Allegany county, 

 (N. Y.) for the purpose of forming a mill race, we saw parts of trees 

 brought up from beneath tough and firm clay, some yards below the 

 surface, evincing the shifting of the banks in ancient time. 



5. Detection ofcorfosive sublimate: — This is not a diflicult task, 

 and the following facts are mentioned, not as being novel, but as af- 

 fording an example of an easy method of operating with means usu- 

 ally found in the family without resorting to a laboratory. 



