GEOLOGY OF THE AUBURN-GENOA QUADRANGLES I9 



the above name on account of its abundant exposure in the vicinity 

 of the village of Cardiff in Onondaga county. 



It is composed of soft shales varying in character from medium 

 light colored and calcareous to very dark and bituminous. It con- 

 tains a row of medium sized spherical concretions and toward the 

 top, thin calcareous lentils composed mainly of Liorhynchus 

 1 i m i t a r e . 



At the base a bed of rather light colored shale in the horizon ol 

 the Stafford limestone is quite calcareous and contains many fossils 

 most of which are common in the limestone in the western part of 

 the State. 



The upper beds are darker, and in some parts quite black and 

 bituminous, and less fossiliferous. Near the top a band of very hard, 

 dark calcareous shale or impure limestone that is continuous across 

 this quadrangle and to Seneca lake, produces cascades in Great gully 

 and Criss creek south of Union Springs. The succeeding shales 

 above this stratum gradually become lighter colored and more argil- 

 laceous and pass into the next formation in the series, the Skaneateles 

 shale. 



Exposures. The Cardiff shale and the hard layer are exposed 

 along the lake shore half a mile north of Levanna, the hard layer 

 rising from the lake level in a bluff that reaches the hight of 12 feet, 

 then with an eight per cent northward dip sinks below the lake to 

 emerge again 15 rods farther north and rise rapidly in the 25 foot 

 bluff that exposes also the dark shales with fossils immediately below 

 it. The hard stratum produces a cascade at the bridge over the next 

 stream south of Great Gully brook (Criss creek), with dark fossil- 

 iferous shales below it, and the gray fossiliferous band at the base of 

 the formation is exposed in the bank of this creek north of the cross- 

 ing of the private road % mile farther north. In Great gully the 

 hard layer appears at the crest of a cascade 6 feet high at the mouth 

 of the ravine, 25 rods west from the lake road and, rising toward 

 the east more rapidly than the bed of the stream, is at the crest of a 

 second fall 5 feet high, and 50 rods up the ravine at the top of a 

 third fall 17 feet high. 



This stratum, with adjacent shales, outcrops by the roadside near 

 the four corners on the hill ij>2 miles south of Oakwood and also 

 along the new railroad from Auburn southward through Genoa, i^ 

 miles south of Auburn. 



Fossils. A full list of the fossils of the Stafford limestone and 

 the Cardiff shale may be found in State Museum Bulletin 63. 



