[Annals N. Y. Acad.%ci., Vol. XIX, No. 5, Part I, pp. 121-134. Pll. XI-XIII. 
4 December, 1909.] 
ON THE ORIGIN AND SEQUENCES OF THE MINERALS OF 
THE NEWARK (TRIASSIC) IGNEOUS ROCKS 1 OF 
NEW JERSEY. 
By Wallace Goold Levison. 
{Read May 12, 1909, before the New York Mineralogical Club.) 
As early as the year 1850 most of the minerals which occur in trap rocks 
had been found in the trap at Bergen Hill, N. J., but evidently near the 
surface and not in notably fine specimens. 2 The Erie railroad tunnel, 
technically known as Bergen Tunnel No. 1, begun in June, 1856, bored 
through the ridge by the tedious method of hand drilling and blasting with 
black powder by August 20, 1859, and opened for traffic early in 1861, 3 4 
first reached the deeper recesses of the New Jersey trap in this locality and 
so disclosed the wealth of zeolites and associated minerals which has made it 
famous. Bergen Tunnel No. 2, 4 and others also productive of such minerals 
followed, but the exigencies of tunneling opposed investigation of the 
conditions under which they occurred. Not until later, when high explo¬ 
sives, percussion machine drills, rock crushers and the rotary kiln for making 
cement were perfected and led to the opening of numerous and extensive 
quarries throughout the State for the production of broken stone to be used 
in the macadam and concrete industries, were the minerals of the New 
Jersey trap satisfactorily accessible for study in situ. 
The visitor to a trap quarry productive of minerals finds that at every 
depth so far reached the trap rock is riven by splits, joints and seams, or is 
cellular with cavities, many of which are lined with clusters of beautiful 
crystals or filled solidly with minerals quite foreign to the trap in composi¬ 
tion. Few investigations appear to have extended as yet below tide level 
or the water table. Conceding trap to be of igneous origin it might be 
1 N. J. Geol. Survey, Ann. Report, 1907, p. 103. 
2 See J. D. Dana, Syst. Min., 3d. ed. 1850. 
3 From private records, gee also H. S. Drinker, Tunneling Explosives and Rock Drills, 
N. Y„ 1882, p. 1084. 
4 Drinker: op. cit., p. 1038. The Delaware Lackawanna & Western Railroad tunnel, cut 
between 1869 and 1874. Hand labor in heading, Ingersol drills in bottom. Rend Rock pow¬ 
der used in preference to dynamite. 
121 
