Report of the State Geologist. 



< )n the east shore, two and one-half miles from the head of the lake, near 

 Staghorn point, is a very remarkable bed of fossil corals. It is a solid mass of 

 cyathophylloid of cup corals, together w ith other genera. It is th e feet thick ai 

 the thickest place, and is exposed along the shore, near the level of the w ater, 

 for a distance of a quarter of ;i mile or more. Thousands of specimens, some 

 of them ten or twelve inches long, and sufficiently suggestive of staghorns to 

 give the name to the point, are in sight in the layer or loose in the water. This 

 coral reef, or a similar one at about the same horizon, is exposed at Lord's hill, 

 several miles northeast, and along the hillside west of Otisco lake. From 

 its position it seems probable that this bed is the eastern extension of the 

 Enerinal band of the western counties, which abounds in cyathophylloid 

 corals of the same species. 



At the top of the group there are about fifty feet of soft dark shales, 

 which contain iron pyrites and become rusty brown on exposure. Calcareous 

 concretions and thin non-persistent calcareous layers composed entirely of fossils 

 are common. The color and character is maintained, though the beds become 

 thinner, as far west as Livingston county, where they form the upper ten feet 

 of the Moscow shales. A good exposure of this horizon is by the roadside, one- 

 fourth mile north of Tully centre, on the upper road. Another is at Tinker's 

 falls, near Labrador pond ; also on the dugway road, from Spafford village to 

 Skaneateles lake. The Hamilton shales have had a very important part in 

 the composition of the fertile soil of Onondaga county, but the direct economic 

 value of the group is very small, and is confined to a few of the sandy layers 

 that are durable enough to serve as building stone. 



Pompey Academy was built in 1834, of stone quarried <>n M. Heard's 

 farm, one and one-half miles north of Pompey hill, and the material for the 

 two stone buildings used as stores were from the same quarry. Another 

 quarry on the Dowlett farm, one-quarter mile southwest from the same 

 village, supplied the stone for the Dowlett residence, and the brown-grey 

 slabs, covered w ith impressions of large lamellibranchs and brachiopods, have 

 been built into all the cellar walls and stone fences in the vicinity. The 

 material for the dam at the foot of the DeBuyter reservoir was quarried from 

 a hard layer near the west end. 



The Tully limestone, the last division of the rocks of the Hamilton 

 group, is composed of several thick layers of hard, light blue limestone and 

 intercalated beds of calcareous shales, which appear in the southern tier of 

 towns, and separate the brow n-grey Hamilton shales from the black Genesee 

 slates. Some parts of the limestone are quite pure and even grained, but the 



