GEOLOGY OF 3ARAT0GA SPRINGS AND VICINITY 89 



It is Stated in a footnote that '' the vertical relations of the colored 

 shale and the black siliceous shale to each other and to the black 

 and gray shale with Normanskill graptolites are not clear. 

 They are all intimately associated."' The same condition prevails 

 farther north in the Schuylerville quadrangle. The facts which 

 are here available for the discussion of the succession of the three 

 divisions are, first, the arrangement in belts from west to east, and 

 second, the structure of Willard mountain. The arrangement of 

 the belts from west to east, with the grits as the westernmost part 

 and the white b.eds following, would suggest that the grits are the 

 youngest division, since they are nearest to the overlying Snake 

 Hill beds. We have found in general in the shale belt, where 

 larger faults or folds interfere, that the westernmost beds of the 

 same zone are frequently the younger. On the other hand, the 

 Willard mountain ridge is capped by the white beds and the mass 

 of the mountain consists of grits, which dip east on the west side 

 and west on the east side, indicating a more or less complex 

 synclinal structure of the mountain and a normal position of the 

 white beds above the grits. 



In weighing the evidence from the two facts, the arrangemeiit 

 of the belts and the Willard mountain section against each other, 

 we incline to consider the latter as nearer the truth, for the 

 abrupt ending of the grit belt near Fish creek proves that the 

 boundary line between the Normanskill and the Snake Hill forma- 

 tions is probably not one of simple succession, but the result of 

 overthrusting and folding, the grit belt being faulted out north of 

 Fish creek. The position of the grit next to the Snake Hill beds 

 is then no evidence for the stratigraphic position of the grit nearest 

 to the Snake Hill formation. Moreover we have good reasons for 

 believing that in the normal succession the Rysedorph Hill con- 

 glomerate is located high up in the Normanskill. Its absence near 

 the areal boundary on the quadrangle between the two is then 

 further evidence of the diastrophic rather than stratigraphic char- 

 acter of that line. 



We infer from a remark of Dale's^ that he would have placed 



1 1899. p. 294. Dale states : " The presence near the base of the Ordovician 

 of a mass of grit containing fragments of slate, limestone and quartzite 

 * * * points plainly to some unconformity at that time. The chief 

 objection to inferring from the particles of clastic rocks in the grits, an 

 unconformity between the Cambrian and Ordovician, is that these grits do 

 not always occur at the contact with undoubted Cambrian rocks." 



