14 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



along the same line, the bluff back of the Cold Spring brewery, in 

 Elmwood park, the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad 

 cut at Croton street, excavations on the university campus, along 

 University and Grouse avenues and East Genesee street, several 

 places along the Erie canal east of the city, and along the Suburban 

 line to Manlius. 



The vermicular limestone was described by Vanuxem in 1842 ^ 

 as follows : '' It is a porous or cellular rock strongly resembling 

 porous or cellular lava. It derived its name from the several holes, 

 which were still lined with a kind of tubular calcareous shell or 

 crust, in some measure resembling the tubular covering of the 

 Serpula . . . but evidently the result of the simultaneous 

 forming of the rock and of a soluble mineral whose removal 

 caused the cells in question." 



There are layers of a similar porous rock in the dolomites over- 

 lying the Gamillus group. In the layers of the Gobleskill and Rond- 

 out waterlimes in the cutting for the trolley line at Fiddler's Green, 

 near Jamesville, the spaces in the fresh rock were filled with celestite 

 crystals. These were first described by Dr E. H. Kraus.^ This led 

 to the conclusion that the cavities in the vermicular limestone at 

 several horizons in the Gamillus group were also due to this mineral 

 which had been dissolved on the weathered exposures. So far as 

 known to the writer, no celestite crystals have been found in the 

 vermicular limestone of the Gamillus group, but the similarity of 

 the rock to that at Fiddler's Green justifies the conclusion that the 

 origin of the cavities is the same. 



There is a fairly persistent bed of this vermicular rock in the city 

 of Syracuse. It outcrops on the Delaware, Lackawanna and West- 

 ern Railroad at Groton street, on Van Buren street, Henry street, 

 on Grouse and University avenues at the same horizon, again on 

 East Genesee street, and at several places east of the city, the best 

 and largest exposure of all being along the Ghenango branch of 

 the West Shore Railroad a mile north of Fayetteville. There is a 

 bed of limestone at or near the same horizon on the hill south of 

 the Erie canal about a mile east of the city of Syracuse which is 

 probably part of the same bed but here it has no vermicular cavities. 

 There are calcareous and dolomitic layers in the Gamillus shales 

 at other horizons, notably near the bottom of the series in the hill 

 in the north part of Syracuse. These limestones, so far as observed, 



1 Geology of New York, pt 3, by Lardner Vanuxem, pp. loi. 273, 279. 



2 Am. Jour, of Science, v. 18, July 1905. 



