zn the Counties of New-Haven and Litchfield. 231 
tewn is indebted to a dissension as to the location of a 
house of worship, which, as usual in such cases, ended in 
the building of two new ones. 
Woodbury basin of secondary Greenstone, &c. 
3 
While descending the last hill, the geological traveller is 
forcibly struck with the new physiognomy of the valley in 
which Woodbury lies. Its features are totally different 
from those of the country on which he still is, and from 
those of the remoter regions all around. 
Abrupt fronts of dark coloured naked rock rise perpen- 
dicularly from flat, and apparently, alluvial plains.— 
‘They have mural precipices and sharp ragged ridges, frin- 
ged with wood, and are marked by a great accumulation of 
ruins of the rock, sloping from the foot half or two thirds of 
the way up the rock ; on the opposite side of the hills the 
descent is gradual, without precipices, and comparatively 
easy. | 
No one who with habits of observation has travelled from 
New-Haven to Hartford, and so on to Northampton, and 
Deerfield,—no one, in short, who has ever been conversant 
with a trap country, can fail almost at first glance to refer 
this to that class of rocks. It is the whin stone of the 
Scotch—-the grunstein or greenstone of the Germans, and, 
in a popular way, may be referred to the same family of 
rocks as the Giant’s Causeway and the cave of Fingal. 
As the traveller descends into the valley, all his impres- 
‘sions are fully confirmed by discovering red sandstone in 
the structure of the houses and by finding a quarry of it 
worked at the foot of one of the ridges of rock. In a word, 
this is a basin of secondary greenstone, or trap, reposing on 
the old red sandstone of Werner. After being so long oc- 
eupied in the regions of gneiss and other highly primitive 
rocks it is gratifying to find thus suddenly so new a feature 
in the geology of the country. 
On consulting Mr. Machue’s late geological map of the 
Dnited States, I find that this spot did not escape his sa- 
gacity ; he travelled over it, and has laid it down as secon- 
dary, and belonging to the old red sandstone formation. 
From our being now within twenty-four miles of New- 
Haven, it might be imagined that this tract is merely a 
