cience News. 



VOL. I 



ALBION, N. Y., JULY 13, 3895. 



No. 24 



Natural Science News. 



A Weekly Journal Devoted to 

 Natural History. 



FRANK H. LATTIN, Editor and Publisher, 

 ALBION, N. Y. 



Correspondence and items of interest to the 

 student of any of the various branches of the 

 Natural Sciences solicited from all. 



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Gay Head. 



The steady flow of modern trav- 

 el has opened an easy way to the 

 delightful island of Martha's Vine- 

 yard, where the socially inclined 

 may enjoy the advantages of sum- 

 mer schools of science, or partici- 

 pate in the exercises of the camp- 

 meeting within spacious and airy 

 pavilions. Here the artist finds a 

 prospect of varied color, with long 

 vistas of cliff and sea and sky 

 standing forth in surpassing love- 

 liness and inviting an effort to 

 place on canvas his richest and 

 brightest tints. 



To the student of nature, how- 

 ever, there is access to an ever-in- 

 creasing store of facts. The more 

 he investigates the structure of the 

 region, with its assemblage of 

 creatures and plants, or views the 

 struggles of atmosphere, land, and 

 ocean to maintain an equilibrium, 

 the more he finds himself beset by 

 perplexing questions, which will 

 not be answered at his bidding. 

 A riddle, as yet but partly solved 

 lies involved in that wonderful 

 piece of earthy structure 

 called Gay Head. Here, 

 at the western extremity of the 

 island rests a huge pile of sand, 

 rock and clay, more than one hun- 

 dred feet high, tinted with numer- 

 ous vivid colors, which have been 

 the wonder and delight of the voy- 

 ager ever since the discovery of 

 the country. The sparse settle- 

 ment of the island has as yet pro- 

 duced but a short chapter of the 



history of its people; but the 

 record of nature's changes and dis- 

 turbances, which have affected the 

 land and sea, would fill large vol- 

 umes. 



To one series of these changes, 

 belonging to its geology, we would 

 now direct attention. The greater 

 part of the island shows evidences 

 of having been submerged five 

 times beneath the waters. At each 

 emergence from the water, an in- 

 creased thickness was given to the 

 body of the land, so that at the be- 

 ginning of the last glacial period 

 it stood on the western side at a 

 level at not less than two hundred 

 feet above the surface of the tide. 



At the close of that period and 

 chiefly remaining to the present 

 time, a deep deposit of fine sand, 

 boulders, gravel, and broken 

 stones, from ten to twenty-five 

 feet in thickness, covered the up- 

 per slope of the ridge. The Po- 

 tomac Clay, which forms the inner 

 and also the lowest descending 

 division of the deposits resting 

 here, rises like a central core to 

 near the summit of this hill. As 

 most of the other members below 

 the glacial deposits are either ab- 

 sent from, or only feebly repre- 

 sented on, the upper surface of the 

 clay, a thin bed of sand and other 

 glacial material forms the super- 

 ficial covering. On both slopes 

 of this ridge, the west and the east, 

 the column of geological forma- 

 tions is present, although not in 

 fully unbrokeu continuity, the 

 Cretaceous Green-Sand Marl hav- 

 ing not been found on the easeern 

 slope by the writer. On this side, 

 however, the Raritan Formation, 

 previously defined in Maryland as 

 the Alternate Clay-Sand group, 

 displays an exceedingly fine ex- 

 posure, with the strata and lami- 

 nated layers in original order. 

 Here also it is enriched with the 

 same plant fossils and lignitic 

 wood so characteristic of these 

 beds on the Raritan, Severn, Ma- 

 gothy and other rivers of New Jer- 

 sey and Maryland. 



No evidences of mountain-fold- 

 ing appear in any part of the ele- 

 vated division of the land. The 

 underlying member which de- 

 scends deep below tide, is the Va- 

 riegated Potomac Clay, and this 

 forms the foundation for all the 

 other formations in their usual or- 

 der of superposition. 



Deep denudation and erosion 

 followed the completion of the 



Potomac Clay, and it was cut to 

 below the line of present low tide 

 at the localities now occupied by 

 Menemsha, Squibnocket and Nash- 

 aquitsa ponds. The broken sur- 

 face of this clay, and the presence 

 of the Raritan and other beds 

 above it on the low hills of Me- 

 nemsha Bight, show how deeply 

 the Potomac formation was here 

 degraded before the next succeed- 

 ing formation was laid down. Con- 

 sequently in early Cretaceous time 

 a high plateau of the clay was 

 carved into sloping reliefs which 

 had their most depressed surfaces 

 spreading away towards the east 

 and south. 



The steep side of the island is 

 on the west, and here it is that the 

 modern surf has cut away large 

 tracts of the ancient bluff. On 

 the Gay Head division the sea has 

 been digging away the cliffs at the 

 rate, it is said, of sixteen to twenty 

 feet in a year. The stretch of 

 boulders called the Devil's Bridge, 

 lying at a distance of fully half a 

 mile from the present beach, shows 

 where the outer border of the bluff 

 formerly stood. The Potomac 

 Clay not only extends out that far 

 at the bottom of this shallow shelf 

 of Vineyard Sound, but we are 

 told that it sticks to the anchor in 

 the channel which now runs on a 

 course more than two miles dis- 

 tant from the present beach. A 

 searching survey ought to show 

 that this clay underlies the Eliza- 

 beth Islands and stretching away 

 south-west passes under the bor- 

 ders of the mainland of Massachu- 

 setts and Rhode Island, and from 

 thence under Long Island and 

 Staten Island to beneath the lower 

 clays of New Jersey. 



The section as it is now exposed 

 in the less disturbed bluffs of Gay 

 Head shows the Variegated Clay 

 near the beach in strata or arched 

 beds from three to more than nine- 

 ty feet in thickness. The undis- 

 turbed upper part of this member 

 is sometimes a whitish or red clay, 

 and is often more or less mixed 

 with sand. 



Immediately above this, but not 

 on the summit of the clay, rests 

 the group for which we now offer 

 the name Raritan Formation, from 

 the river on the shores of which it is 

 so extensively exposed. It consists 

 of a few feet of brown, coarse sand 

 at base, which is sometimes indur- 

 ated into a moderately coherent 

 sandstone. Above this is a bed, 



