lO NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



lina beds follow the range of hills that borders the Mohawk valley 

 on the south, their outcrop being at first well up the slopes and 

 at a distance of about 15 miles from the river itself. They parallel 

 the Mohawk as far as Oneida county, where, owing to increased 

 thickness of the members and the flatter topography, they begin 

 to spread out so as to occupy a surface from i to.3 miles wide. 

 Their course thus far is quite sinuous due to the numerous deep 

 north and south valleys tributary to the Mohawk which produce 

 long upstream deflections. Beyond Oneida county their outcrop 

 rapidly broadens; it is about 12 miles wide at the west end of 

 Oneida lake and fully 20 miles on the line of Cayuga lake where 

 it attains the maximum width for the State. The outcrop in west- 

 ern New York is more regular, maintaining an average of from 

 7 to 10 miles and running almost in a straight line parallel to the 

 shore of Lake Ontario. 



The Salina of this area is mainly a shale formation. The other 

 elements are gypsum which occurs in the upper shale beds; salt 

 near the middle of the section ; and an impure limestone which 

 forms a thin capping to the shale in the central and western parts 

 and discontinuous bands within the shale itself. The great mass 

 of shale, except for a few feet at the base, is devoid of fossils; 

 thierefo're, in subdividing the Salina, use is made of these elements 

 which have a fairly constant horizon. The detailed stratigraphy 

 of this belt will be discussed later under a separate head. 



The second area within which the Salina beds appear is in south- 

 eastern New York and here they show a quite different develop- 

 ment. They are found in two principal belts, one of which begins 

 in Ulster county near the Hudson and follows the Shawangunk 

 mountain uplift in a southwesterly direction across the State line 

 into New Jersey and the other is in Orange county beginning near 

 Cornwall and running parallel to the first along the Skunnemunk 

 ridge. It may be remarked that the true sequence of the strata 

 in this region has only recently been established. Our knowledge 

 of the wide development which the Salina here shows has come 

 largely through the work of C. A. Hartnagel ^ whose conclusions 

 derived frc'm stratigraphic evidences have been fully confirmed by 

 study of newly discovered fossil-bearing sections. The main mem- 

 bers of the Salina are conglomerate at the base, shale and sand- 



1 Notes on the Siluric or Ontaric Section of Eastern New York. N» Y. 

 State Pal. An. Rep't. 1903. p. 342 et seq. Also Upper Siluric and Lower 

 Devonic Sections of the Skunnemunk Mountain Region. N. Y. State Mus. 

 Bui. 107. 1907. p. 39 et seq. 



