THE GEOLOGY OF THE SYRACUSE QUADRANGLE 1 5 



are thin bedded and sometimes very hard, but tend to crumble on 

 exposure to the weather, so that they do not appear at the surface 

 in many places except where exposed by excavations. 



BERTIE WATERLIME ^ 



The upper division of the Salina series immediately overlying the 

 gypsum of the Camillus group, consists of a gray to buff-colored 

 waterlime or dolomite. In this vicinity it is from 6 to 10 feet thick, 

 made up of evenly bedded layers varying from a fraction of an inch 

 to a few inches thick. 



The stratum has been named from the town of Bertie, 6 miles 

 west of Buffalo, in the province of Ontario. In Ontario and around 

 Buffalo in western New York the Bertie waterlime is characterized 

 by a rich eurypterid fauna, but no eurypterids, or in fact fossils 

 of any kind, have been found in it in the Syracuse area. Since 

 there is no unconformity of erosion at either the bottom or the top 

 of this limestone and since it resembles lithologically the other watef- 

 limes of the area, it has been separated from the other strata only 

 by tracing it from the west where it is distinguished from the others 

 by its fossil contents. 



The upper part of the waterlime has been quarried extensively 

 for the production of cement at Buffalo, Williamsville and Akron 

 in western New York. At Buffalo it is 53 feet thick. Very little 

 use has been made of it in the Syracuse area because the Manlius 

 waterlime in the overlying rocks furnishes a superior quality of 

 waterlime to the Bertie in this locality. A small quantity of it was 

 used for cement in the Miller quarry a mile south of Lyndon in 

 order to lessen the expense of quarrying the gypsum as the lime- 

 stone had to be removed in order to get the underlying gypsum. 



COBLESKILL DOLOMITE 



The Cobleskill dolomite immediately overlies the Bertie water- 

 lime in this locality' without any sharp line of separation. In most 

 places the Cobleskill contains numerous cavities about the size of 

 a walnut or smaller, caused by the leaching out of a small coral, 

 Cyathophyllum hydraulicum. In some places there 

 are many irregular masses or lumps of chert scattered through the 

 Cobleskill, and in general the bedding planes are more irregular than 

 in the Bertie. It also resists the action of the weather better so that 

 it stands out more in relief. In some localities, especially at Fid- 

 dler's Green, near Jamesville, the stylolite or suturelike markings 



