114 LOWER PEMNSULA. 



The total thickness of the strata exposed at Bellevuc I estimate 

 to be about 50 or 60 feet. The rock is generally quarried for 

 lime-burning ; as a building-stone it is used in the vicinity, and 

 large quantities of it have been used in the construction of the 

 foundation for the State House at Lansing. The rock was broken 

 into fragments, and filled into the bottom of the ditches for the foun- 

 dation, over which a liquid hydraulic cement was poured. South 

 of Bellevue, along the valley of Battle Creek, the rock soon disap- 

 pears from sight ; at the junction of the creek with Kalamazoo 

 River, the beds of the Waverly group are near the surface, and be- 

 tween Bellevue and Battle Creek outcrops of the gypsum formation 

 should appear in the bed of Battle Creek, but no indications of this 

 mineral have ever been found there. 



The trend of the formation is to the southeast ; travelling in 

 this direction, the first indications of the carboniferous limestone are 

 found again some miles north of Albion, and from there across the 

 centre of Jackson County many isolated patches of the limestone are 

 met with. It is often impossible to determine the exact strati- 

 graphical relations of these outcrops to the surrounding sand rock 

 and shale strata of the coal measures ; the beds have been evident- 

 ly considerably disturbed during the drift period, segments of hills 

 having been carried away by the advancing stream of drift masses 

 from their original resting-place, and deposited, as they are now 

 found, in more or less uptilted, irregular position inclosed within 

 the drift, but with the relative stratigraphical order of the beds to 

 one another fully preserved. Several such large masses of carbo- 

 niferous limestone within the drift are intersected by the Michigan 

 Central Railroad in the interval between Albion and Jackson. A 

 short distance northeast of Parma village the carboniferous lime- 

 stone underlies quite an extensive area, and several quarries were 

 once worked in it. The rock is of dark-bluish color, full of sparry and 

 silicious veins ; it contains Allorisma clavata, Crinoid joints, etc. 

 As a building-stone it has little value, nor is it good for lime-burn- 

 ing, having too great an admixture of silicious matter. Above the 

 blue lime rock is a brown, cellulose dolomite rock equivalent with 

 the brown dolomitic seams of the Bellevue quarries ; its composi- 

 tion is, 



