8o LOWER PENINSULA. 



State. The quarries are about half a mile south of the village, 

 with the rock beds close under the surface, on the summit level of 

 a slight undulation. 



The sandstone is of middling coarse grain, greenish-yellow, inter- 

 mingled intimately with kaolin-like granules, by which the firmness 

 of the rock is impaired. For ordinary uses, however, it is durable 

 enough, and selected blocks are used for ornamentally-cut door 

 and window sills, etc. The beds are not very thick, often irregular 

 through discordant stratification, and alternation with shaly seams. 

 The thickness of all the rock beds uncovered in the quarries may 

 be 50 feet. Fossils have never been found. 



Southwest of Napoleon, at Stony Point, a station on the Jackson 

 and Hillsdale Railroad, sandstones entirely similar to the Napo- 

 leon rock are quarried. The quarries were first opened in an up- 

 tilted mass of sand-rock ledges in vertical position, in all probability 

 an effect caused by forces of the drift period, by an underwashing 

 of the strata, and consequent disruption from the main body of the 

 deposits, which were found behind the loose portion in regular hori- 

 zontal position. The bottom of the valley on the side of which 

 the quarries and rock escarpments are, presents no rock ledges ; 

 it is deeply eroded, and the erosion is filled up with drift material. 

 In the quarries, about 35 or 40 feet of strata are exposed ; the 

 highest beds are thin-bedded, soft flagstones of discordant stratifica- 

 tion, the lower strata being in beds of from i to 4 feet in thickness. 

 The vertical clefts dividing the beds are rather irregular, oblique, 

 or curved, which causes considerable waste in shaping the blocks. 

 The rock is moderately coarse-grained, light, drab-colored, and 

 sufficiently compact to make a valuable building-stone. Fossils 

 are generally rare, but abound locally in certain seams ; the 

 species are all identical with the forms found in the sandstones 

 of Marshall and Battle Creek. I collected in the quarry : Nucula 

 Hubbardi, Nucula stella, Solen quadrangularis, Solen scalpriformis, 

 Sanguinolaria similis, Myalina Michiganensis, Allorisma, Bellero- 

 phon galericulatus, Chonetes Illinoisensis, Orthoceras, Goniatites, 

 and others. The same rock beds are laid open in many localities in 

 the vicinity of Jonesville, of Hillsdale, Osseo, and Moscow, but 

 the quality of the rock is not always so well adapted for use as a 

 building-stone, its general character and the fossils inclosed prov- 

 ing, however, the identity of all the outcrops. Every locality has 



