84 Geological Survey of the State of Neio York. 



vium of sand and rocks, and the rich hmestone, slate, and shale 

 lands to tlie west, which are well known as exceedingly fertile. 

 This portion of the county is celebrated for its herds of cattle 

 and horses, and its production of wheat. The difficulties hereto- 

 fore experienced for want of a ready communication with the 

 large markets, has prevented it from advancing as rapidly in 

 wealth and population as other portions of the state, but the con- 

 struction of the Black river canal, will remove this obstacle to its 

 prosperity ; and it is destined to compete successfully with its 

 sister counties on the Erie canal, in its agricultural productions and 

 mineral resources. " The rocks of the county are the prim.ary, 

 the Potsdam sandstone^ the fucoidal layers, ('which are inter- 

 posed betwen the calciferous sandrockand the Mohawk limestone, 

 and are so abundant in the valley of the Mohawk,') the Mohawk 

 limestone, (at Boonville, forty feet thick, and quarried for the 

 locks of the canal,) which hes under the bird's-eye limestone, 

 but the latter being absent in Lewis county, the Trenton lime- 

 stone succeeds, increasing in thickness from thirty feet at the Mo- 

 hawk to three hundred feet, at Copenhagen, generally divided by 

 cracks or fissures, that have a twofold direction ; one system be- 

 ing north and south, and the other east and west ; the hlack slate, 

 the Frankfort slate, and the shales of Pulaski. All these strati- 

 fied rocks except the first two, pursue a uniform north and south 

 direction through the county." 



The opinions entertained by the geologist of the fourth dis- 

 trict, Mr. Hall, in his report for 1838, p. 291, and in his report of 

 1840, pp. 393, 394, and 452, 453, concerning the rocks of this 

 portion of the state, their age and relative position in the scale, 

 are quite different from each other. The lithological character of 

 the New York rocks has occasioned doubt and perplexity in the 

 minds of many observers, and the labor expended to resolve these 

 doubts, has heretofore resulted in no clearer view of the case, but 

 served rather to increase the darkness ; and where we have com- 

 pared them with the rocks of foreign countries, according to 

 English or French classifications, the anomalies were found too 

 great to permit our regarding them as the equivalent of either sys- 

 tem. Mr. Hall appeared satisfied, however, with the conclusion 

 expressed in his former report, because it rested in part upon the 

 evidence afforded by the " organic remains ;" but since then, the 

 same kind of evidence has convinced him that these rocks are 



