REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR I914 1/ 



These great possessions are practically geological parks, for all 

 their merits of beauty and the basis of their effective charm is in 

 their geological structures. Niagara Falls, the " time-piece of the 

 ages," the " geological clock," aside from being the most stupendous 

 exhibit of water power in the western world, has been for genera- 

 tions and is today the object of study by geologists who seek a 

 basis for the reckoning of geologic time, for the rate of action of 

 geologic forces, for the record of changes in the topography and 

 drainage of the Great Lakes basin. Watkins Glen is a deep gorge 

 in the old Devonic shales which has been cut out since the with- 

 drawal of the ice sheet and its inviting, sinuous retreats and deep, 

 shady recesses hid away among graceful rock walls, stand as a 

 monument of the geologic work of erosion done since the close of 

 the Ice Age. The Palisades are an outpoured lava sheet whose 

 prismatic edges have been bared by the flow of the ancient Hudson 

 waters. The Saratoga Mineral Springs Basin, not conserved for its 

 scenery but for the eventual benefit to public health, is an extraor- 

 dinary geological monument and record, probably nowhere to be 

 equalled in the diversity and abundance of its carbonated waters. 

 Here, running through the village of Saratoga Springs, stands the 

 escarpment of the celebrated " fault," the only outward sign of the 

 controlling causes of these variant waters. Westward across the As- 

 sure in the earth's crust made by this fault, none of these abundant 

 saline waters pass. Coming into the Saratoga basin deep under- 

 ground, they encounter the carbonic acid gas emanating from this 

 fault fissure and with this added (solvent power they take the salts out 

 of the rocks in varying degrees, till reaching nearer to the fault itself, 

 they spring out to the surface at any chance, impregnated and super- 

 saturated with the gas. Dead a few years ago because the gas was 

 being pumped away, today they are again full of life and promise, 

 with the hard hand of the law forbidding any further abstraction 

 of their vitality. 



Letchworth Park embraces the three beautiful and impressive 

 falls of the Genesee river plunging down through a deep gorge in 

 the rocks — a course its waters took after the ice sheet had blocked 

 and filled up their ancient and easier channel. They too have done 

 all this majestic work since the last great change in our geology, the 

 retreat of the Great Glacier. 



Thacher Park conserves a magnificent escarpment in whose rock 

 face is recorded a long chapter in the life history of New York and 

 from whose summit one reads the whole panorama of the great 

 Hudson-Mohawk gateway. 



