S76 
ASSEMBLT 
of a line from Little-Falls to Lansing's kill, the confirmation of which 
is found along the road from Trenton village to Boonville, a greater 
thickness being there exhibited, than is common elsewhere to thi« rock. 
It is only in Oneida county that the Trenton limestone exhibits two 
distinct masses, as to colour and texture, the dark or black coloured, al- 
most compact limestone, and the light gray or sparry limestone. The 
latter, in thicker layers, appears to be made up of the remains of 
crinoidea. Other fossils are found in it, and such as are common to 
both masses, as leptoena, deltoidea, and delthyrus microptera. The 
gray limestone, commences on the Nine Mile creek below Stitsville, and 
extends north to near Boonville village. It forms the upper mass of 
Trenton falls. It is quarried near Holland patent, on Cincinnati creek, 
near where its waters are lost by sinking between the cracks or fissures 
of the limestone, and at Wm. Roberts's on a branch of Steuben creek. 
At these two last localities, it is worked for marble. Mr. Roberts uses 
machinery for sawing the stone. 
From the gray limestone being in thick layers, of the required hard- 
ness, not altering by exposure to the air, and from proximity, it will no 
doubt be selected for the locks of the Black river canal, which will pass 
near Rome. 
The value of the dark coloured limestone, is greatly diminished for 
the arts, by its almost constant alternation with the black shale. In 
some places this is so frequent, as at Trenton falls for example, that 
more than a hundred layers of each can be enumerated. This alterna- 
tion shows a periodicity for the deposition of each layer, and a different 
source for the materials of each layer. 
No doubt the time will arrive, when we shall seek in our own re- 
sources for those things which we now obtain elsewhere. When this 
period arrives, the Trenton limestone will furnish rare and beautiful 
black marbles, their interest increased from the abundance of animal re- 
mains, whose living prototypes have long ceased to find a place on earth. 
It is only on the road, and not far from Remsen village, and above 
the falls of Lansing's kill, that any signs of ore were observed in.this 
rock. These were stains of iron, derived, no doubt, from the pyrites 
of the decomposed black shale, interposed between the layers, forming 
an ochery soil. 
In an agricultural point of view, the admixtures of shale with the 
limestone, have been highly favorable, in rendering the limestone more 
