266 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



stone, crushed stone etc. The New Scotland is an impure shaly 

 limestone with shale intercalations. The most valuable member is 

 the Becraft, which has a light gray color, semi-crystalline texture 

 with pink and white fossils abundantly sprinkled through it; the 

 lower beds contain 95 per cent or so of lime carbonate. It is well 

 shown in the cement quarries around Catskill and Hudson. Lime, 

 flux and building stones are also obtained from these beds. In 

 Schoharie county the Helderbergian limestones are exposed in the 

 quarries at Howes Cave, Cobleskill, Middleburg and other places, 

 where they are worked in conjunction with the Manlius limestone. 

 They extend across southern Herkimer county and appear at Oris- 

 kany Falls, Oneida county, with a thickness of about 75 feet, over- 

 lying about 50 feet of the Manlius limestone. 



The Onondaga limestone is a notably persistent formation that 

 exhibits also much similarity of characters over the long extent of 

 outcrop. The main element is hard fine-grained limestone, con- 

 taining bands and nodules of chert arranged more or less in courses 

 or as irregular disseminations. This part is the Corniferous, 

 so-called, while below may occur a coarser semicrystalline limestone 

 of considerable purity. The cherty limestone is not much used 

 except for crushing but the more homogeneous layers that are 

 found with it supply also building stone, flux and material for lime 

 manufacture. The outcrop extends across the State from Erie to 

 Albany county, where it turns south into Greene county to near 

 Kingston and thence runs southwest to Port Jervis. The western 

 section in Erie and Genesee counties is marked by a low ridge or 

 escarpment which begins in Buffalo and runs northeast to Akron 

 and thence nearly due east, having the Bertie waterlime at the base 

 and the gypsum beds of the Salina lying just north of it. Quarries 

 have been worked in Biiffalo, at Williams ville, Akron, Le Roy, Lime 

 Rock and Honeoye Falls. In the lower part of the formation is a 

 stratum of coral rock that is quite pure calcium limestone with 95 

 per cent or so of the carbonate; this bed is 5 feet thick in Buffalo 

 but increases to 35 feet at Williamsville, only to diminish rapidly 

 again to the east, where it continues as a fluctuating member all the 

 way to Albany county. 



Luther ^ estimates the thickness of the Onondaga in the Buffalo 

 district at 168 feet; at the Livonia salt shaft in Livingston county it 

 is 136 feet; in a test well at Ithaca it measures 78 feet; in Onondaga 

 county 65 feet; at Clarksville, Albany county, 85 feet and at Coun- 

 tryman hill, Albany county, 100 feet. In Ulster county it still 



^ N- Y. State Mus. Bui. 99, 1906, p. 13, 



