1 8 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



These are our greater natural monuments in the possession and 

 conservation of which this State is rich not only in scenic beauty 

 but in educational service. 



But the lesser object, the minor natural feature, may carry a 

 lesson and express a sentiment quite as important and uplifting as 

 the greater, and of these we have added to the public domain some 

 of very notable concern. 



LESTER PARK OR THE '' CRYPTOZOON LEDGE " 



About 2 miles west of Saratoga Springs, in the town of Green- 

 field, Saratoga county, and just a little turn to the left from the 

 State road, lies the first of these acquisitions. It is the gift of 

 Willard Lester, Esq., of Saratoga Springs, to the Regents of the 

 University on behalf of the State Museum and in trust for the 

 people of the State. To use the language of the deed, 



" This conveyance is made upon the express condition that said 

 premises are to be used for the protection and preservation in their 

 present site of the fossils exposed in the limestone strata upon the 

 lands hereby conveyed to the end that they may be always available 

 to the people of the State of New York for purposes of examination 

 and study and to be used for no other purpose whatever." 



This area covers about 3 acres of ground which is crossed by a 

 highway and is thus readily accessible to the public. The spot is 

 one of singular natural beauty, bounded on one side by a ravine, on 

 the other by rising hill land, the road leading down into a wooded 

 shady retreat and soon coming back again into the main highway. 

 On one side of the road lies the '' Cryptozoon ledge," a broad plat- 

 form of Cambric limestone covering a half acre or more, smoothed 

 down to a horizontal surface by the wear of the ice sheet. This 

 ledge is filled with the remains of some of the earliest marine plants 

 known to have lived in the ancient seas — lime-secreting algae, 

 known in science by the name Cryptozoon proliferum, — 

 which here grew in such amazing abundance as to form a great cal- 

 careous reef not unlike the coral reefs of the present seas. The 

 Cryptozoon grew like great cabbages, in large round heads and in 

 concentric layers, and the cabbagelike plants of this marine garden, 

 dating back to the dawn of the earth, have been sliced across by the 

 cutting edge of the glacier so that the surface of the Cryptozoon 

 ledge presents an innumerable array of these cross-cut plants. The 

 .weathering agencies of untold centuries have brought out all their 

 peculiar internal structures, their concentric layers, their buds and 

 offshoots, while the microscope turned upon carefully prepared thin 



