CHAPTER VI 



THE ENGLISHTOWN^ SAND. 



The formation immediately overlying the Woodbury clay is 

 the Englishtown sand. It is a white qr yellow quartz sand, some- 

 times marked by delicate lines of red, which give it a highly varie- 

 gated appearance. Locally, parts of the formation have been 

 cemented with iron into rather massive beds of sandstone. 

 Usually the formation is a clean, quartz sand, often closely re- 

 sembling the sand on the present beaches, yet not infrequently it 

 contains thin laminae of fine, brittle clay, which contain no sand 

 or grit, and towards the top of the formation there is a horizon 

 at which a discontinuous bed of clay occurs locally. 



This formation is thickest at the northeast and decreases grad- 

 ually towards the southwest. In Monmouth County it has a 

 thickness of over loo feet, on Crosswicks Creek it has diminished 

 to 30 or 35 feet, and at Swedesboro it hardly exceeds 20 feet. 

 Beyond this last point it apparently disappears as a recognizable 

 formation. The lithologic characteristics of the formation are 

 the same where it is thin as where it is thicker, and it retains its 

 integrity as a distinct bed which is readily recognizable from 

 Atlantic Highlands to Salem County. 



The differentiation of the formation from the subjacent Wood- 

 bury clay is rather sharp, the transition from the clay to the sand 

 being accomplished in a thickness of two or three feet at the most. 

 The formation passes upward by a somewhat rapid transition 

 into the overlying glauconitic or sandy clay, so that its upward 

 limit can be easily recognized. 



As yet this formation has not afforded any fauna, not a single 

 fossil of an sort having been detected in it. 



^Formerly called Columbus. 



(79) 



