Geology of the Lakes and the Valley of the Mississipyi. 203 



and which marks the eastern margin of Lake Erie. At Queens- 

 town Heights it rises abruptly from the sandstone to the thickness of 

 seventy yards ; and were the strata, as generally supposed, horizontal, 

 would seem, at Bufialo, to occupy the space between the levels of the 

 two lakes — ^a perpendicular distance of three hundred and thirty-four 

 feet. These remarks, it is true, are not novel ; but the attention of 

 the scientific spectator seem.s to have been diverted from the geo- 

 logical character and relations of the rock, by the wonders of the 

 scene. The surface rock has inadvertently been called a siliceous 

 limestone — a word in such frequent use among us to denote the im- 

 bedding of quartz, that the rock properly so called, though found 

 but at Fontainbleau and Nemours in France, might seem to be of 

 common occurrence here. The principal rock at the falls is in fact 

 a compact, argillaceous fetid limestone, of a drab or buff color, alter- 

 nating with slabs of blue or bluish gray, and imbedding entrochi, 

 lythophites, selenite, and a {e\v shells. Silex and quartz are un- 

 doubtedly found in connexion with it, but deposited in its cavities 

 and fissures, or in crystals on its surface. At Buffalo, flints are found 

 in it; but, as they are found in the chalk cliffs, they enter not into 

 its structure. Having a quality common to most secondary lime- 

 stones, of hardening by exposure, it has the appearance of a transi- 

 tion rock at that place ; but it works easily when taken from the 

 quarry, affords a good building stone, and is that of which the fine 

 column to the memory of General Brock is constructed. It corres- 

 ponds, in all material respects, to the lias of the English geologists, 

 and corroborates the German doctrine of universal formations.* No 

 geologist has perhaps called it expressly by that name ; but Doctor' 

 Mitchell in his observations on the geology of the United States, ap- 

 pended to his edition of Cuvier's theory of the Earth, in speaking of 

 the 'layers' of this calcareous mass, (as he justly but perhaps un- 

 consciously denominated them, the word being changed to lias by a 

 provincial corruption,) used a term precisely indicative of their spe- 

 cific character. The distinctive form of these layers is particularly 

 perceptible in the succession of steps formed by their lateral edges in 

 the steep immediately above the precipice. As in the English lias, 

 the muschelkalk is wanting — at least at the cataract — the difference 



* It certainly proves, along with other facts of the like kind, that certain forma- 

 tions were ver)^ general, although it maj^ well be doubted, whether there are any 

 forraations above the granite, which can be considered as strictlj' universal.— Ed. 



