DESCRIPTIONS OF THE FORMATIONS. 37 



system. On the Delaware division of the K Y. L. E. & W., or Erie Railway, is 

 an opportunity of seeing the red rocks of the Catskill formation for a number of 

 miles, and also on the N.Y. & O. Midland Railroad north of the Bloomingburgh 

 tunnel. 



In Pennsylvania it is composed of a vast succession of thin-bedded red and 

 gray sandstones, with thin seams of red, green and mottled shales, also coarse and 

 fine sandstones of various hues of red, brown, gray and greenish ; together with red 

 and greenish coarse silicious conglomerate of white quartz pebbles, the whole being 

 thick bedded, and with an oblique laminated structure. It has not much of 

 interest, either to the scientific or practical inquirer. Its most interesting fossils 

 are fish-remains, which, in the Catskills, extend through 100 feet in thickness of 

 strata. It is the Old Red sandstone of England, lying under the coal. The 

 English New Red sandstone is over the coal, being the Permian, Jurassic and 

 Triassic formations, but these are not found directly over the coal in America. 



The Catskill formation is a poor one for agricultural purposes. The fields are 

 stony, with many projecting ledges of red rocks. Its sandstones are too hard, and 

 too destitute of lime to produce a fertile soil, and the country covered by it is either 

 a wilderness, or very thinly populated. 



13-15 CARBONIFEROUS AGE. 



13 a. Lower Sub-Carboniferous. To a superficial observer, the remarkable 

 substitution of great sandstone and conglomerate deposits, under the coal-measures 

 in the east, for generally limestone deposits, under the coal-measures of the west, 

 must seem inexplicable. But the simple explanation is, that all the sub-carbon- 

 iferous sand-beds of Pennsylvania, formed near the old continent, thin away, and 

 gradually disappear, before they reach the Mississippi; while the five great sub- 

 carboniferous limestones of Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri, formed in a deep quiet 

 sea, on the contraiy, thin away, in going eastward, to 40 feet in Westmoreland 

 County, and 25 feet in Somerset County, Pennsylvania ; and totally disappear 

 before reaching the Schuylkill and Lehigh Rivers. But the same limestone 

 deposits thicken southward to 600 and 1,000 feet in Virginia, and even more in 

 Tennessee. 



In the Pennsylvania Anthracite country, the next formation above the Catskill 

 is a gray sandstone, called by Prof. H. D. Rodgers the Vespertine. In the second 

 geological survey, Prof. Lesley calls it the Pocono, from the name of the mountain 

 bounding Wyoming Valley, on the south side. The miners call it the second 

 conglomerate. It contains carboniferous fossils, but no coal of value. Invariably 

 the Vespertine is the outside mountain surrounding the coal-basins, the inside 

 one being the 14 a. Pottsville conglomerate, or Millstone grit, and they are 

 separated by 13 b. Mauch Chunk red shale, of Lesley, or Umbra], of Rogers, a 

 soft rock, which forms a valley; and all four, 12. Catskill or Ponent, 13 a. 

 Vespertine or Pocono, 13 b. Umbral or Mauch Chunk, and 14 a. Serai or Pottsville 

 conglomerate, are worthless for farming purposes. 



