Science, Geology and Physics 



1S50 



Johnston, James Finlay Weir. Notes on North America; agri- 1850 

 cultural, economical and social. Bost. : C. C. Little and J. Brown. J°nn ston 

 Edinburgh and Lond. : W. Blackwood and Sons. 1851. 1 :247-258. 



Part of the country through which the railway [from Buffalo] 

 conducted us on our way to Niagara was still uncleared or 

 unstumped, and sprinkled with log-huts and apparently poor 

 settlers, surrounded by indifferent crops of Indian corn, on soils 

 evidently better adapted for wheat. We cross again, on this 

 route, the belt of flat wheat-land, belonging to the Onondago 

 salt and Niagara limestone groups, which, as I formerly stated, 

 stretches beyond the Niagara River far into Canada. As seen 

 here, it is a clayey region, on which the system of thorough- 

 drainage is destined hereafter to produce most beneficial results. 

 This village of Niagara consists chiefly of hotels 

 and churches; and the running of a morning and evening train 

 to Buffalo is considered indispensable to the success of at least 

 one of these sets of establishments. 



In the afternoon, I went down to the Falls. I crossed over to 

 the Canadian side, and spent several hours on the banks which 

 overlook them. I afterwards walked to the suspension bridge a 

 couple of miles below, which is itself a nervous thing to walk 

 along, and from which the view of the Falls, and of the ravine, 

 is striking and beautiful. The section of the strata, as seen at 

 this place, is as follows: — 



Limestone 1 



Shale J Niagara group 



Limestone Clinton group 



Sandstone and thin clay marls, chiefly red. Medina sandstone 



This section is now well known, as well as the influence of the 

 Niagara shale, in hastening the working back of the Great Falls. 

 It illustrates, however, what I have had occasion to say in refer- 

 ence to the soils and geology of western New York. The 



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