292 



Report of the State Geologist. 



from the same sources as the marl, are common throughout the county except 

 in the northern tier of towns. These deposits are usually found where some 

 subterranean stream of water surcharged with lime carbonate comes to the 

 surface, forming a spring around which, as the water is evaporated by exposure 

 to the sun and atmosphere, the travertine is deposited, sometimes with earthy 

 and vegetable matter, but frequently free from them. The proximity and 

 abundance of lime in more convenient forms deprive this material of the 

 economic value it might otherwise have. 



Masses of conglomerate, or "hard pan," formed by infiltrating calcareous 

 waters depositing lime carbonate in sufficient quantities in beds of gravel or 

 coarse sand to produce cementation, are common. A remarkable instance is 

 exposed in Hopper's glen, near Onondaga valley, where a small stream has 

 cut through a bed of very coarse gravel fifty feet thick, which is so firmly 

 cemented that it does not disintegrate on exposure; but as the softer material 

 beneath it lias been removed by the action of the stream, it has fallen into 

 the ravine below in enormous masses. Some of the larger are thirty to forty 

 feet in their longer diameter. 



Condition of the Rock Strata. 



The general southward dip of the strata, about forty feet per mile, is 

 apparent without the use of instruments. Except in the vicinity of the 

 limestone escarpment, the undulations which are of frequent occurrence are 

 low and long, for that reason easily escaping notice, unless observed along the 

 shore of a lake where comparison with the level surface of the water brings 

 them more plainly to view. Approaching the line of the great outcrop of the 

 limestones from either the north or the south side, it is found that the flexures 

 are sharper and more numerous, and that along the entire length of the 

 escarpment in this county, and including a belt three to five miles wide, 

 evidence of profound movement and disturbance of the strata appears at 

 nearly every exposure. Vertical faul tings of more than a few inches were 

 not observed, but overthrusts producing dislocation of the strata to the 

 amount of several feet, anticlines with extensive longitudinal fissures at the 

 summit several inches wide, chasms and jointings, are numerous. 



In Beahan's quarry, near Manlius, as shown in the south wall, the strata 

 dip to the south w est for twenty rods at the rate of three feet per one hundred, 

 then for two rods the floor is level to the foot of an inclination that rises for 

 four rods, one foot in ten, and continues at a somewhat lower angle for some 

 distance further, covered by drift. One hundred rods south of Beahan's, 



