NEW RED SANDSTONE. 



259 



sandstone rocks, and our ^ologists have not iden- 

 tified any of them as belonging to the new red for- 

 mation. As there are numerous brine springs in 

 the red sandstone of Oswego, and extending west 

 to the Niagara River, this circumstance would seem 

 to lend great probability to the opinion that this 

 rock is equivalent to the new red sandstone of Eu- 

 rope. But whether this be so or not, the formation 

 which we designate as the new red sandstone occu- 

 pies a narrow belt of country, ranging for many 

 miles up the valley of the Connecticut River, com- 

 prising red, soft argillaceous shales and harder red 

 sandstones, and, near the top of the series, a coarse, 

 variegated conglomerate, made up of a vast assem- 

 blage of pebbles of primary and other rocks. In 

 ^various places Professor Hitchcock has observed 

 the marks of extinct and gigantic races of birds of 

 the wading class deeply impressed in this rock in 

 various places ; also fossil remains of fishes of dif- 

 ferent species, in New- Jersey we find the same 

 formation bounded on the southeast by the Hudson 

 River, Staten Island Sound, the Raritan River from 

 its mouth to the mouth of South River, and from 

 thence by an irregular line to Trenton, thus em- 

 bracing the southeastern portions of Hunterdon, 

 Morris, and Bergen, together with the whole of 

 Somerset, all Essex, and a portion of Middlesex 

 counties. The strata repose directly on granitic 

 gneiss, and consist, in the ascending order, of alter- 

 nating red conglomerates, sandstones, and shale, 

 surmounted by a coarse, variegated, calcareous con- 

 glomerate. From New-Jersey we trace this for- 

 mation across the Delaware into Bucks county 

 (Penn.), and across the Susquehanna, below Harris- 

 burgh, into York county, and so on through Fred- 

 eric county, Maryland, to the Potomac River in 

 Virginia. 



Recent explorations in Virginia have also brought 

 to light an extensive group of sandstone strata, 



