REPORT OF THE STATE PALEONTOLOGIST I903 5 



without the aid of the evidence derived from studying the fossils. 

 I therefore asked Mr Gilbert van Ingen, who at that time was 

 ofificially connected with this department and who had many 

 years' familiarity with the region, to undertake the attack on 

 the difficult situation there presented. Mr van- Ingen with the 

 assistance and cooperation of Mr P. Edwin Clark, for many 

 years superintendent of the Newark Lime & Cement Co. at 

 Rondout and mining engineer of long experience, has given the 

 subject very detailed examination and careful study. His results 

 were presented in the report of last year and will be found to 

 afford a well illustrated exposition of the obscure and complicated 

 structure of the region. 



Traverses of the Catskill mountains and collections of the fauna 

 of the Port Ewen beds. During a part of the season Mr George 

 H. Chadwick has been engaged in reviewing the section of the 

 Catskill mountains in Greene county, in the hope of ascertaining 

 some new clues to the nature of the life forms in the higher 

 strata. Subsequently he was occupied in collecting as freely as 

 practicable from the limestone and shale beds which constitute 

 the Port Ewen (formerly termed the Kingston) beds and best 

 exposed in the vicinity of Rondout and Kingston. This forma- 

 tion is that at the top of the series originally termed the Helder- 

 berg and subsequently Lower Helderberg, and is a sedimentary 

 facies reproducing that of the Catskill shaly limestone below, 

 otherwise known as the New Scotland beds. The fauna of these 

 upper beds has not been carefully analyzed, though there has 

 been a well grounded belief that its affinities were with the later 

 or Oriskany fauna rather than with that of the Helderbergian 

 beneath. 



Distribution of the Cobleskill limestone. Reference was made 

 in the last report to the study of this formation, the importance 

 of which as an element in the New York series had not hereto- 

 fore been recognized. Mr C. A. Hartnagel has continued and 

 concluded this study and has traced the formation from Port 

 Jervis at the south, northward through Orange and Ulster 

 counties and from Schoharie county westward through Otsego, 



