UPPER SECOND VRY ROCKS. 



101 



he would find. If he should happen to strike a bed 

 of rock-salt, we suppose the friends of the old red, 

 would soon come over to the new. 



Associated with this rock in the Valley of the 

 Connecticut, we find beneath it a red conglomerate, 

 composed almost entirely of the ruins of granite 

 and mica slate. This doubtless is a variety of the 

 old red sandstone. Above the new red we find a 

 conglomerate of a dark reddish-gray colour, com- 

 posed of fragments of mica slate, talcose slate, 

 chlorite slate, hornblende slate, and slaty quartz 

 rock, with occasional nodules of quartz, feldspar, 

 and granite. This is very coarse, the nobules being 

 sometimes 3 or 4 feet in diameter. We also find a 

 trap conglomerate, consisting of a mixture of angular 

 and rounded masses of trap and sandstone, with a 

 cement of the same materials. 



We also have sandstones of different colours and 

 textures ; some of them being composed chiefly of 

 fine silicious sand, with specks of mica, and cement- 

 ed by red oxide of iron* This is quarried for archi- 

 tectural purposes, at Chatham, Connecticut. And, 

 lastly, we meet with shales and limestones, including 

 under the former several varieties of argillaceous 

 or clay slate, of a gray, red, and black colour, 

 though the red is the most abundant. When black, 

 it is bituminous. This contains an abundance of 

 impressions of fish and vegetables, and contains 

 nodules of iron ore and iron pyrites, from the de- 

 composition of which it often falls to pieces. Pro- 

 fessor Hitchcock remarks, that u if it were possible 

 to doubt that the new red sandstone formation was 

 deposited from water, the surface of some of the 

 layers of this shale would settle the question de- 

 monstrably ; for it exhibits precisely those gentle 

 undulations which the loamy bottom of every river 

 with a moderate current presents. But such a sur- 

 face could never have been formed while the layers 

 had that high inclination to the horizon which many 



