280 
[Assembly 
can be perpetual. It is not impossible that a considerable portion of 
the soil of the third district, from its newness and the quantity of calca- 
reous matter originally belonging to it, does not at present require this 
mineral, but the time will come when it will be needed, and with its 
enlightened population will be used. 
Reposing upon the limestone at Oriskany falls, or Casety hollow, 
there is a white sandstone not seen elsewhere in the two counties. 
From some fragments which I found last year to the west, it is the same 
rock which forms the locks at Lyons, as I was told. The sandstone is 
divided into two or three layers; the whole mass about twenty feet 
thick. Parts are very friable, readily crumbling into sand. It is used 
at the glass works at Vernon. The fossils of this rock are peculiar to 
it, being very large species of the genus orthis and delthyrus. 
In the towns of Marshall, Sangerfield and Bridgewater, the pyriti- 
ferous rock appears to rest upon the limestone, the white sandstone not 
evident. 
In many parts of Oneida, and in different rocks, coal has been sought 
for, and in every instance wholly ineffectually, as might be supposed 
from the information now possessed of these rocks. Every locality was 
visited, where diggings had been made, in order to ascertain what had 
given rise to them. In almost every instance they were in dark colour- 
ed shale. In some of them were small fissures, usually filled with la- 
millar limestone and coal, just sufficient of the latter to excite hope in 
those unaware of the geological remoteness of these rocks, from the true 
coal strata. 
OSWEGO COUNTY. 
The county of Oswego presents very little geological variety as to 
rocks. The whole of its area, exclusive of the part to the west of the 
outlet of Oneida lake and Oswego river, that part not yet having been 
examined, exhibits no other rock than the gray and the red sandstone, 
with the exception of the towns of Sandy Creek, Pulaski, and a part of 
Richland; these towns containing those rocks which have been desig- 
nated by the name of the shales and sandstone of the lower part of Sal- 
mon river. The shales and sandstone lie under, or in other words, are 
the supporting mass of the gray and red sandstone, the red invariably 
the upper or the newest rock. The shales and its sandstone are per- 
fectly identical with those which extend through Oneida, reposing upon 
the black shale, not only in super-position, but composition and fossils 
