194 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



is less good building stone than in the Portage horizon. The 

 variation in color and texture is necessarily great in the extensive 

 area occupied by the Chemung rocks, but the sandstones can be 

 described as thin bedded, generally intercalated with shaly strata, 

 and of a light-gray color, often with a tinge of green or olive- 

 colored. The outcropping ledges weather to a brownish color. 

 Owing to the shaly nature of much of the sandstone of the Che- 

 mung group, the selection of stone demands care, and the location 

 of quarries where good stone may be found is attended with the 

 outlay of time and money, and with great chances of possible fail- 

 ure. Quarries have been opened near the towns and where there 

 is a market for ordinary grades of common wall stone, and also for 

 cut stone, but the larger part of their product is put into retaining 

 walls. At Elmira and Corning good stone has been obtained, 

 which is expensive to dress, and does not compete for fine work 

 with sandstones from districts outside of the State. The quarries 

 at Waverly, Owego, Elmira and Corning, and nearly all of the 

 quarries in Allegany, Cattaraugus and Chautauqua counties are 

 in the Chemung sandstone. 



Catskill group 

 As implied in the name, this formation is developed in the Cat- 

 skill mountain plateau in the eastern part of the state. Sand- 

 stones and silicious conglomerates predominate over the shales. 

 The thicker beds of sandstones are generally marked by oblique 

 lamination and cross-bedding, which make it difficult and expen- 

 sive to work into dimension blocks. Except for flagging and for 

 local use but little is quarried. There are no large towns in the 

 district, and consequently the demand is light. There are, how- 

 ever, some good quarries, which are worked for flagging, chiefly 

 along the New York, Ontario and Western railroad and the Ulster 

 and Delaware railroad lines in Ulster and Delaware counties; and 

 in the Catskills, in Greene county, there are quarries in Lexington, 

 Jewett, Windham, Hunter and Prattsville. 



