Luther — Economic Geology of Onondaga County. 



285 



sented in Onondaga county by a bed of bituminous black shale with slaty 

 laniinse, which is exposed to a small extent in the high hills in the south 

 part of Fabius, Tully and Spafford, with a spur extending into the caster., 

 part of Otisco, and an outlier in the southern part of LaFayette. Fossils, 

 except plant remains, are exceedingly rare, and concretions, so abundant at 

 this horizon further west, are seldom seen in this county. There are few 

 . good exposures of the entire sectiou. One, however, occurs in the road lead- 

 ing up from Stafford's landing on Skaueateles lake. The bed here is 

 ninety feet thick. It is exposed in the ravine east of Ousby's quarry, near 

 Tully village, and the upper part in "King's gulf,' 1 one-half mile south of 

 Ousby's. The upper part is somewhat less bituminous here than at Spaffo.rd. 

 Outcrops of this bed occur at various places on the sides of South mountain 



Figure 10. The east and west rock section along the southern boundary of Onondaga county. 



in Fabius, and considerable time and money has been expended in digging 

 into it, in the vain belief that, beyond exposure, it would be found to be coal. 

 Nothing of economic value has yet been discovered in these black slates. 



In the absence of any well denned line of separation between the Genesee 

 slate and the Portage shales in the western counties, this bed of black slat.' 

 may be assumed to belong to the Genesee. The light colored Portage shales 

 with flaggy layers and thin sandstones are the surface rocks over the steep 

 sides of the highest hills in the extreme southern part of the county, and also 

 occupy a part of the high plateaus usually found at the summits. About 

 twenty feet next above the Genesee slates are soft light bluish or olive shales, 

 some layers fissile, others blocky, non-fossiliferous so far as known. Above 

 these, eighty-five feet of rather hard blue shales with a few thin sandstones in 

 which no fossils were observed, then a bed of sandstones and hard shale 

 x\t * Kings' gulf" these sandstones contain Aulopora in large quantities, 



