28 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



Darton, Ries, Hartnagel and others have described a fine-grained 

 conglomerate at the north end of Pea Hill, near Cornwall, and six 

 miles north by east of Highland Mills. Lithologically it is identical 

 with the conglomeratic beds at the extreme top of the section at 

 Highland Mills and with the conglomeratic portion of the Kanousc 

 (Newfoundland) formation of New Jersey. It has the same strati- 

 graphic position as those beds and underlies the Cornwall shale of 

 Pea Hill, although not in actual contact with it. No doubt is enter- 

 tained as to its being the same formation, in spite of the fact that 

 certain characteristic Oriskany fossils have been reported from it. 

 The rock is very hard and fossils are few and not readily obtained. 

 It is not at all impossible that they have been wrongly identified 

 as was the case with the earlier finds in the similar beds near New- 

 foundland which were regarded as Oriskany. 



In this connection it should be noted that the Oriskany strata 

 identified by Clarke in the Highland Mills section carry many fossils 

 in large masses and are heavy-bedded, fine-grained sandstones with 

 no trace whatever of pebble-bearing layers or conglomerates, and 

 that they lie 244 feet below the layers of grit and conglomerate at 

 the top of the section. 



At Pea Hill there is a covered interval of considerable width 

 between the New Scotland limestone and the conglomerate hereto- 

 fore regarded as Oriskany, so that there is room for at least a 

 portion, if not for all the beds of the Highland Mills section, even 

 if we do not consider the possibility of the loss of a part of the 

 section by faulting. 



In view of all these f^cts there can be no question that the con- 

 glomerate at Pea Hill should not be referred to the Oriskany, but 

 to the Onondagan, including perhaps the top of the Schoharie. If 

 it contains Oriskany fossils as previously reported (which perhaps 

 may be doubted in view of the fragmentary and poorly preserved 

 nature of the material) their presence may indicate a return of the 

 Oriskany fauna at a later period, as suggested by Hartnagel.^ 



Along the western margin of the Green Pond-Skunnemunk moun- 

 tain syncline there is a series of disconnected outcrops of a coarse 

 white quartz conglomerate. They vary in size from small exposures 

 of a few square yards to ledges a mile in length and a hundred 

 feet or more in height. The most conspicuous of these are (i) 

 north of Bull Pond, (2) south of Oxford Depot, (3) several small 

 areas a mile east of Oxford Depot, and (4) south and (5) southwest 



1 Hartnagel, C. A., N. Y. State Museum Bulletin 107, 1907, p. 43. 



