210 



Repokt of the State Geologist. 



In the Genesee valley, in a well on the Retsof mine property, the total 

 thickness of the salt bearing strata was 124 feet, which includes two beds of 

 rock, one twelve feet and the other three feet thick, and this record may be 

 taken as showing the average thickness in that vicinity. 



At the West Bloomfield and Bristol wells in Ontario county, but one bed 

 eight to fifteen feet thick was found. At Naples, the bottom of the well is 

 in the second bed of salt, sixty-three feet below the top of the upper one. A 

 rock stratum separates the beds. 



At Watkins the drill penetrated 100 feet of the salt strata, but did not 

 reach the bottom. 



From the top of the upper bed of salt in the Ithaca test well to the 

 bottom of the seventh or lowest one, is 470 feet. This measurement includes 

 six beds of rock with an aggregate thickness of 222 feet; the seven beds of 

 salt together being 248 feet thick. The greatest thickness in the Solvay 

 wells at Tully was found in Well No. 1, Group B, where it was 318 feet. At 

 Morrisville, Madison county, it is but twelve feet. 



That part of the bed that lies within easy drilling distance from the 

 surface is practically inexhaustible, and what the maximum thickness is of 

 the salt formations deeply buried under the hills and elevated tablelands 

 of Cortland, Chenango and the southern tier of counties, where they doubt- 

 less exist, may never be known, but it must be enormous. 



Overlying the salt deposits there are 250 to 300 feet of shales and 

 magnesian limestones that contain the great deposits of hydrous calcium 

 sulphate or gypsum found in Madison, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, Ontario, 

 Monroe and Genesee counties. 



The shales are usually olive, bluish grey or ashen colored in compar- 

 atively thin beds, and dark, blue grey, gypseous shales or "plaster rock 11 in 

 two or more heavier beds of very uneven thickness, the greatest being the 

 upper gypsum bed at De Witt, Onondaga county, which, including some inter- 

 calated limestones, is 65 feet thick. 



Considerable quantities of anhydrite are also found at this horizon west of 

 the Genesee river. 



No red shales have been found at exposures of this horizon east of the 

 Genesee river, but a layer eighteen feet thick of highly colored red, green 

 and mottled shale was found in the Lehisjh shaft 140 feet above the salt bed. 



For the reason that the section of country in which this formation 

 constitutes the surface rock is mostly deeply buried under the drift, the con- 

 tinuity of the layers quarried at different localities is not well established, but 

 whether continuous or lenticular, they are co-extensive with the sale beds. 



