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GEOLOGICAL AGE AND FORMATION. 29 



GEOLOGICAL AGE OF THE COUNTY, AND ITS FORMATIONS. 



'HE facts which have been stated, together with others 

 collected in adjacent parts of the State,* become the 

 basis for classifying the formations of the county, and 

 determining their geological age. The conclusion I have 

 arrived at from them, is, that they all belong to the Quor 

 ternary System of the Geologists, and that two formations 

 can be distinctly recognized — the Drift and the Alluvium. 



System, has reference to geological age, and the Qua- 

 ternary System is that which has originated in the latest 

 or most recent of the geological periods. 



Formation, has reference to origin, and the Drift Forma- 



* Shells of the common clam and oyster hare been found several feet beneath the sur- 

 face, in digging wells near the Delaware, in the township of Lower AUoway's Creek, Salem 

 County. They were but little above tide. At Fairton, Cumberland County, on the east of 

 the Cohansey, shells have been found near the bottoms of wells ; the land there being not 

 much elevated above tide. Shells have also been found in wells on Turkey Foist, in 

 Downe Township, under similar circumstances. They have also been found a little above 

 high-water mark, in the clay, at the brickyard in Buekshutem, In the east bank of Mau- 

 rice River, a mile above Port Elizabeth, on the Lore property, there is an oyster-bed ex- 

 posed by the wearing away of the bank, which is at least ten feet above high-water mark. 

 It is in blue mud, and the shells are closely bedded an with their edges upward, just as 

 they are in the shell-beds found at the mouths of the creeks, and in the bay. The bank 

 is twenty feet high, and about two hundred feet long. The material under the shells is clay 

 and sand ; the shells are in a layer of from a foot to a foot and a half thick in blue mud, 

 which is stratified in curved strata. The upper part of the bank is sand, and without strati- 

 fication. The tide rises there between seven and eight feet. Other beds of shells are found 

 on the Manamusking, near Port Elizabeth. Near Leesburg, and also near Heislerville, 

 on Ewing's Neck, shells, of the species now common in the Bay, are found in the upland, 

 covered with several feet of earth. At May's Landing, Atlantic County, stumps have 

 been met in digging wells ; and at Barnegat, in Ocean County, both stumps and shells of 

 the common kinds have been found in like situations. 



